Ankita Raina thread

[knarayen]

Check Kamesh Srinivasan's blog entry on the same.

Ankita Raina would love to thank Somdev Devvarman from the bottom of her heart!

Kamesh said it better than I could.

Prof

[Omkara]

I don't understand Ankita's rant and why people are so upset here. I don't deny there was some error on Som's judgement but let's understand the error he made.

Ankita is our no 1 and thus by virtue of that she deserves best resources available in this country. No doubt. But what has she achieved as our no 1.

She broke into top 300 on 7th October, 2013 and reached a career high of 222 om 20th April, 2015. As of Feb 2018 her rank is 250. Basically she has done nothing significant in over 4 years.

Only recently by beating high ranked players that she proved she is working on her game and there is potential for further improvements.

[rajitghosh]

Let us draw a parallel with men's tennis. This is like Mahesh Bhupathi or Harsh Mankad or Rohan Bopanna playing singles for India unlike a Leander or Som. Rohan played singles in Hopman Cup in the 2 years India played. He lost every match. India won a few matches because of Sania winning a few singles matches and mixed doubles wins. Neither Mahesh nor Rohan, barring the odd upset did anything of note in singles in Davis Cup.

[arjun2761]

An extreme example is that Basketball(or Baseball or American Football) at elite level is popular in exactly 1 country but one wouldnt argue against it not being competitive enough because even though it isnt international enough, its definitely dense enough. Think of it this way, Michael Jordan wasnt even a proper international player

One would need to be pretty delusional to say the sport played in the US compares to one where Indonesia or Malaysia is a major force. The US wins 121 medals in the Olympics (even when their best athletes don't focus on most Olympic sports) while large badminton countries such as Indonesia or Malaysia wins barely a handful of medals. As a sports power, the US outranks most continents outside Europe. Also, the top US sports are professional sports with the leagues having billions in revenue and incentives for players to perform while a sport such as badminton is basically still mostly an amateur sport although the prize money has been increasing rapidly in recent times but is still quite small. As far as basketball being international is concerned, more "sports power" countries play basketball as significant sport than those that play badminton, for example. The "dense" argument only makes sense in the context of the sports power countries that play a sport rather than the sheer number of impoverished folks with minimal access to facilities that may inhabit a country which plays a particular sport. Even though India has a billion folks, it is really a very minor sports power country as exemplified by the 2 medals it won in the last Olympics.

With respect to tennis versus badminton, tennis certainly has a greater than 10x prize money differential and more importantly most tennis players are professionals while most badminton players are still dependent on government/federation patronage to even compete in most events. Almost all of the countries which play badminton also plays tennis but North America, South America, most of Europe and Australasia play tennis as a significant sport without having having badminton as a significant sport. The most powerful sports country (China) which plays badminton typically dominates badminton while having almost no success in tennis. This is also true, for example, in the most professional sport on the planet - soccer - in which the Chinese government driven machine has almost no success whereas they do much better in the less "dense" and less professional sports.

Of course, comparing achievements across two sports or two eras is always subjective but I would equate top 100 in tennis to be at least as difficult as achieving a top 10 level in badminton.

[Sin Hombre]

Agree with the consensus.

Cracking top 100 in tennis is at least, if not harder, than cracking top 10 in badminton.

I would say with even higher certainty that cracking top 500 tennis is significantly harder than top 50 in badminton given the latter probably has only 30-40 players chasing points and being backed by their federations.

Basketball is also the second most popular team sport in the world if we use any sporting metric.

[sameerph]

Ankita is playing qualies this week in China.

At $60K ITF Women, Zuzhai, China

[Q1] (5) Ankita Raina (IND,250) vs. Ziyue Sun (CHN,875)

[sameerph]

Ankita had to fight really hard to pull of a win in Q1.

At $60K ITF Women, Zuzhai, China

[Q1] (5) Ankita Raina (IND,250) d. Ziyue Sun (CHN,875) 64 57 76(2)

Next,

[Q2] (5) Ankita Raina (IND,250) vs. Shuo Feng (CHN,736)

[sameerph]

Bad loss for Ankita today.

At $60K ITF Women, Zuzhai, China

[Q2] (5) Ankita Raina (IND,250) l. Shuo Feng (CHN,736) 46 36

That is why it looked risky to travel there just for 1 week to play qualies. The talented Chinese juniors are playing freely to create upsets. So, looks a wasted trip for Ankita. Hope she can get into doubles draw and win a few matches.

[sameerph]

Ankita does win her first round doubles match.

At $60K ITF Women, Zuzhai, China

[R1] Ankita RAINA (IND) / Kimberley ZIMMERMANN (BEL) d. Valentini GRAMMATIKOPOULOU (GRE) / Polina MONOVA (RUS) 16 63 [10-7]

Next,

[QF] Ankita RAINA (IND) / Kimberley ZIMMERMANN (BEL) vs. (4) Xinyu JIANG (CHN) / Qianhui TANG (CHN)

Prarthana too played here along with Chinese partner Jing-Jing Lu but lost in first round in straight sets.

[bujilover]

Sorry for the negative tone but Prarthana, to me, looks over-ranked at the moment.

[sameerph]

Ankita lost in the doubles QF.

At $60K ITF Women, Zuzhai, China

[QF] Ankita RAINA (IND) / Kimberley ZIMMERMANN (BEL) l. (4) Xinyu JIANG (CHN) / Qianhui TANG (CHN) 36 46

Off to Gwalior next week for $25K there.

[sameerph]

Congratulations to Ankita Raina for winning $25K title in Gwalior this week. This her sixth title overall and second one at 25K level.

These are her results this week -

[R1] (4) Ankita Raina (IND,255) d. (Q) Rishika Sunkara (IND,953) 62 61
[R2] (4) Ankita Raina (IND,255) d. Berfu Cengiz (TUR,505) 76(6) 36 62
[QF] (4) Ankita Raina (IND,255) d. Monica Robinson (US,NR) WO
[SF] (4) Ankita Raina (IND,255) d. Yana Sizikova (RUS,474) 62 40 retd.
[F] (4) Ankita Raina (IND,255) d. (2) Amandine Hesse (FRA,215) 62 75

Final win was especially sweet against a player whom she had lost to at WTA, Mumbai.

She will get 50 points for this win. Due to 1 week delay for 25K tournaments, this would have usually got into her rankings as on 26th March. However, due to 2 week Miami tournament, there will be no ranking update on date. So, these points will go into her ranking as on 2nd April. She has 8 more points falling off before that. So, net 42 points will be added to her current tally which will take her rankings to between 210-215, a new career high.

She is very close to making the French open qualifying. The cut off date is 30th April and last year's cut off was 208. Ankita has no more points to defend in April. So, she will need to get some 10-15 points somewhere in April to make it safe for her.

[bujilover]

Thanks for the additional stats, Sameer. Ankita (and Karman) have entered the $25K Kofu Challenger for the week of March 26. Hopefully she will win a round or 2 there. There is also another one in Japan of the same level which she has entered, so it wouldn’t be a problem to gain 8-10 ranking points to keep her rank for FO qualifying. Good luck to her!

[PKBasu]

High probability that Ankita will play both the FO and Wimbledon qualifiers this year. She just Wimbledon last year, but she has enough points in the bank to make it in this year I think.

[S_K_S]

Hopefully she plays in the Birmingham Classic again this year.