The Sports-India Community

Some good news as some of the players were allowed to hit some balls for practice starting today and our Ankita is one among them. Her hitting partner is Francesca Jones, the Brit who qualified for the main draw. Jones is one of a kind, in that she only have 3 fingers on each hand (including thumbs)...

TA has now asked all the players that flew to Melbourne to quarantine for 2 weeks, chances are they will be pushing the start of the tournament by a week at least. Doesn’t sound bad when you get free accommodation, food, and exercise equipment and a chance to take home $100,000 even for a R1 loss.

New update to the covid cases, now one person on the flight from Abu Dhabi also tested positive. Kerber, Kuznetsova, Marta Kostyuk, Cirstea were on this flight and asked by the TA to quarantine. I wonder if Ankita was on the same one (hope not).

The flight that came from LAX to Melbourne yesterday had 2 passengers testing positive on their PCR test after arrival. I think one of them is identified as the flight attendant and the other one is Lauren Davis’s coach Eddie Elliott. Apparently, notable players such as Azarenka, Stephens, Nishikori...

Ankita posted a story on Instagram showing her hotel room in Melbourne. Hope she gets to hit with some quality players during when they let them out for 5-hr practice.

I don’t want to hope for someone to get sick by this deadly virus for Ankita to play in her first slam main draw. As Sameer mentioned in one of his posts, she is in a good position to snatch a Q spot in the subsequent Melbourne WTA tournaments.

Magda Linette is also out of the main draw due to a knee injury. Ankita is now #4 in the alternates list. Hopefully, she’s on one of the chartered planes to Australia.

Madison Keys now tested positive for the coronavirus and hence is not traveling to Australia.

This week, both Zeel and Vaidehi started with a good R1 win but unfortunately, Tunisia is canceling the ongoing and all the tournaments in the future due to surging COVID cases. This is unfortunate especially when 2 of our players are playing decently. I hope they both now focus on playing in Egypt ...

And now, Ysaline Bonaventure who is the top ranked loser from the FQR has posted on Instagram that she received a LL spot due to a player withdrawal. I don’t know what that means for the alternates list but Ankita is now the 6th alternate.

^^^No. Because that this AO involves 2-week mandatory quarantine, they are going to select 8 players that lost in FQR (preferably, based on their order of ranking) as potential alternates for the main draw since they want to have additional alternates. I’m reading this from the tennis forum!

Besides, Kirsten Flipkens also injured her ligament playing in the Abu Dhabi WTA 500 but she has a month to recover now. We won’t know if or when she decides to withdraw (in which case, I’m not sure how AO will decide the LLs - probably they will assign doubles players on the site).

I think Ankita will be selected as part of the 8 top-ranked players for the lucky loser draw. She’s 7th in that list, and if I read it correctly, 6 will be picked for LLs. Hopefully, she will be lucky there!

Not to be. 6-2 6-3. Bad loss for Prajnesh. Once again, it comes down to the fighter Ankita to keep us going. Go Anki!!!

So glad Broady lost. Ramk, if he wins the second round, will be up against a Spaniard who has a walkover in QR2. I just want both of our guys to make it to the FQR.