Junior Circuits Abroad for Indian Kids...

[sameerph]

Manas Dhamne and Kriish Tyagi are playing in J300 in Cairo, Egypt. Both had a tough draw against 4th and 3rd seeds respectively. Manas pulled off a nice upset win against 4th seed and Kriish took the first set off the 3rd seed but could not complete the win.

At J300 Cairo, Egypt (Clay)

[R1] Manas Dhamne (IND,142) d. (4) Viktor Frydrych (GBR,24) 63 75

[R1] Kriish Tyagi (IND,117) l. (3) Reda Bennani (MAR,22) 62 16 36

Next,

[R2] Manas Dhamne (IND,142) vs. Daniele Rapagnetta (ITA,78)

[jayakris]

That is a big win for Manas. Top-25 wins in the juniors have been extremely rare for our players.

[Rajiv]

Manas retired from his R2 match 4-6 1-1.
The scoreline suggest he didn't retire from a hopeless loosing situation, and hope it is nothing serious.

[Prakharulz]

Manas withdrew from the J500 event in Cairo. Might not be a small niggle last week.

[sameerph]

^^^^ Hope is it is only a small niggle. He seems to be having some physical issues since past few months.

This week 14 year old Maaya too played in girls singles but lost in first round against 17 year old Asylzhan Arystanbekova (KAZ,53) 36 64 16, she is the same player Maaya lost to in Asian juniors in November last year.

[sameerph]

17 year old Aditya Govila finished as runner up at J200 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Aditya beat player who had upset first and third seeds in earlier rounds.

With that run, Aditya will rise up to around 110 in junior boys rankings and a couple more runs like these will get him into junior slam qualifying/main draws for this year which is his last year in juniors.

[jayakris]

Sameer, a question: Where do you go these days to find the exact DOB of any player? ITF's junior player pages had stopped showing it a few years ago, and only shows the age in years. I know I can go to the AITA rank lists and find it but that is a pain

[sameerph]

^^^ Yes, unfortunately AITA rankings lists is the only one I know for DOB information.

I dont know why on ITF website they discontinued that a couple of years ago I guess after they redesigned the website and made it worse than it originally was. In new website, you cannot even get all results in one page ( unless I missed something) which we used to copy/paste over here.

[jayakris]

Yes, that is what they did. As usual, website redesigning *always* makes the website worse. It is not just at the ITF site ... They all try to make it work on cell phones and they drop all kinds of details for that.

Posting results has been the worst thing. I also have not found any easy way to do that.

[jayakris]

Forgot to mention earlier that Ika Raju Kanumuri (who iirc is from a rich family in Hyderabad and so has been based abroad, probably the US0) won a J60 last week in Santa Tecla (El Salvador). She is 17 years old (but has one more year in the juniors) and has been playing a bunch of Latin American events, with on and off success and one or two wins here and there. She moved up to a career high of #322 with the title last week and is the India #4 behind Krisha, Maaya, Rishitha. Ika Raju has not looked like a big prospect to me, based on her results, but she has persevered, gained a lot of experience from the travels and she has some more time in the juniors - so I hope she will surprises us with more good results!

[jayakris]

16 yr old Rethin Pranav Senthilkumar (IND,119) was the top seed at the Canberra J100 in Australia this week, and took the title, beating third seed Cruz Hewitt (Lleyton Hewitt's son!) in the semifinal and 2nd seed Harry Pugh (NZL,174) in the final... Rethin will move up a bit to just around top-100 now. He was in the Australia J100 last week too, but lost in the third round (PQF) to a player whom he beat this week in the QF.

[jayakris]

The big J300 in Kuching, Malaysia, starts on Tuesday. A good contingent of Indians are there. Rethin, Kriish, Aarjun and Hitesh (with Aradhya Kshitij, Kandhavel Mahalinam and Vishal prakash in the qualies) on the boys' side and Krisha and Maaya (with Rishitha Basireddy in the qualies) on the girls' side...

Aditya Govila will be at the J200 in Aldershot, GBR, with his friend, Rohan Belday (USA). I think Aditya is also basically an Indian-American though his citizenship is still Indian.

#498 Arnav Paparkar, probably the best player among the 2008 boys, will be at the Doha J60.. He is in the final of the J30 in Istanbul, Turkey today. He is the 2nd seed there and faces the top seed in the final right about now.

[sameerph]

Arnav won the title beating top seed from Turkey 64 46 61 in the final of the J30 in Istanbul, Turkey. That will help him move up to around #430 un the ITF junior rankings.

[jayakris]

Very good win by Arnav Paparkar over a home favorite Turkish top seed ranked #342 (who was inside top-300 earlier this year too), though wins at the J30 level is what we should expect from him. He went to Turkey to play only a J100 (lost in the R2 last week) and a J30 and is going to the Doha for two J60s now, rather than stay in Turkey for the J100 in Izmir. I guess he wanted to make sure of getting some good points from the travel to Turkey which may have been via Doha in the 4-week swing.

Arnav will move up ahead of #460 Aradhya Kshitij as the #2 Indian behind #402 Samarth Sahita, among the 2008-born guys with 2 years junior eligibility remaining after this year. But he is about 7-8 months older with a Feburary DOB, compared to Samarth (Nov.) and Aradhya (Sep.) who are the AITA #1 and #2.

[jayakris]

The big J300 in Kuching, Malaysia, starts on Tuesday. A good contingent of Indians are there. Rethin, Kriish, Aarjun and Hitesh (with Aradhya Kshitij, Kandhavel Mahalinam and Vishal prakash in the qualies) on the boys' side and Krisha and Maaya (with Rishitha Basireddy in the qualies) on the girls' side...

So we have 9 Indians in the main draw. Aradhya and Kandhavel qualified in (with Kandhavel with an upset of the 4th seeded Aussie in the qualies). Rishitha was the 4th seed in the qualies and made it in. The main draw starts on Tuesday