ITF Team Juniors (u16 Davis/Fed Cup, u14 World Jun. Tennis)

[jayakris]

Under 16 girls team is selected as Maaya Rajeshwaran, Diya Ramesh and Yashika Shokeen. Maaya and Diya are expected, Yashika Shokeen is rather unexpected choice as third player.

That is indeed a surprise. Yashika must have done better than Sohini, who I expected would be the odds on favorite for the third spot!

[Dinesh]

Is Yashika Vivek Shokeen’s daughter/relative?

[jayakris]

Must be a relative at best. Vivek Shokeen is about 36, so he would have had to get married very early to have a 15 year old daughter. I can't find anything online that connects these two.

[jayakris]

Kamesh mentions the Arnav Paparkar matter in his article - Junior Davis Cup selection camp commences in New Delhi

The non-selection of the national under-16 champion Arnav Paparkar who has been competing in the ITF under-18 and men’s events, continued to be a point of debate. The secretary of the Maharashtra State Lawn Tennis Association (MSLTA), Sunder Iyer, said that he was taking up the matter with the AITA, as the idea was to help the country field the best team, despite the constraints of the selection procedure.

How can you leave out the best player, whatever was the reason?...

[sameerph]

Women's BJKC cup is being played this, week in Kazakstan.

We are 5th seeds and in group D along with top seeds Australia. We started with 2-1 wins over Hongkong and Kyrgyzstan. Maaya won both her singles matches easily but Diya Ramesh lost her singles match today against Kyrgyzstan and Maaya had to come out to pull out a doubles win with Diya.
Against Hongkong, we won both singles but Diya and Yashika lost the doubles match.

We are thru to QF but will play against Australia tomorrow to decide group topper.

[jayakris]

Maaya may need to pull it out for us in two more ties with 2 wins each, I suppose

[sameerph]

We lost 1-2 against Australia in the final group match. We played Yashika Shokeen at #2 singles and she got double bagled by the Australian #2. Than, Maaya had a pretty good comeback 3 set win over Australian #1. But, in doubles Maaya and Diya lost in straight sets.

So, we finish second in the group and will play top seed Japan tomorrow in all important QF. So, we are not getting any luck with the draw too. Looks very tough to beat them with only 1 good player.

[jayakris]

Rishitha should have been in the team. She has not been setting the junior tour on fire or anything but she is much more experienced (remember her beating Maya Iyengar of USA at the Delhi J200 in January? Maya is now #83). Just like not picking Arnav Paparkar in the boys' section, AITA's selection committee did not pick Rishitha.

Why the hell do we even have this shameful organization of worms called AITA? All they do is to screw Indian tennis over and over again. When we have two good players, invariably they will not pick one of them. When they actually pick a team with multiple good players, they will select a loser for captain too. Pathetic.

[sameerph]

Damn, we lost from a winning position 1-2 against Japan in the QF.

Diya Ramesh lost in straight sets against Japanese #2 but Maaya had another good win over ITF junior #64 Yamamoto.

In doubles, we were up a set and 5-3 up in second set but lost the set and than the super tie break.

[sameerph]

Our boys under 16 team is seeded 7th this week in junior davis cup. We are in group B along with 4th seeds Hongkong.

We started with 2 wins against lower ranked team, 3-0 against Jordan and 2-1 against Indonesia. Our #1 Aradhya Kshitij won both matches easily. Samarth Sahita won at #2 singles against Jordan but today against Indonesia we fielded Ranveer Singh at #2 and he lost in 3 sets against Indonesia #2, than Samarth came back for doubles along with Aradhya and got the win for us.

Tomorrow we play Hongkong for the match that decides group topper.

[jayakris]

Good start, despite not having Paparkar in the team. I guess we gave Samarth some rest. Captain Sajid Lodi making some "strategic" moves?

[sameerph]

We lost against Hongkong 1-2. Samarth Sahita beat HKG #2 in 3 sets but at #1 singles, Aradhya Kshitij lost in straight sets against their #1 Jack Cheng.
Cheng is ranked 157 in ITF juniors, so at a much higher level than Aradhya.

Later we lost doubles too in straight sets.

We play third seeds Taiwan in the QF . Looks difficult to win against them.

[jayakris]

We pay for not picking the players we needed to have in the team. AITA, the bloody worms.

[sameerph]

And we lost to Taiwan 0-2 in the QF. Samarth Sahita lost in 3 sets but Aradhya Kshitij lost in straight sets against their #1 who is ranked #120 . So, expected loss. If Arnav Paparkar had been there would have been some hope.