Junior Circuits Abroad for Indian Kids...

[sameerph]

I see Maayaa in entry list of J200 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia after a week's break and than Asian juniors J300 in Thailand the week after. That will be a good test for her mostly playing against older and higher ranked opponents.

[arjun2761]

^^^ That’s a lot of vowels in her first name!

[sameerph]

6 Indian boys and 1 Indian girl playing in J200 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Of the 6 Indian boys, 6th seed Aryan Shah and 11th seed Krish Tyagi got first round byes. Out of the other 4 Indian boys, Hitesh Chauhan and Rethin Pranav won in straight set and Cahir Warik won in 3 close sets against local wild card. Debashish Sahu lost his match. Cahir, Rethin and Hitesh are all playing seeds in next round.

Only Indian girl playing here is 14 year old Maayaa and she continued her winning streak to 21 with an easy win in first round here. She now faces her toughest test in some time against 2nd Lily Taylor (AUS,106) in second round.

[sameerph]

Very good day for us at Malaysia 200 and best result came from our only girl in the draw. 14 year old Maaya continues her terrific run with her career best win thus far against 106th ranked second Lily Taylor 62 64. Maaya is now on a 22 match winning streak with only 1 set lost in this run.

Maaya meets Seri Nayuki (JPN,279) in QF.

And in boys 3 upsets wins by our boys, Hitesh Chauhan, Rehin Pranav and Cahir Warik also upsetting seeds in second round. Also our 2 seeds, Aryan Shah and Kriish Tyagi duly won their matches as did Indian-American third seed Aditya Ganeshan.

In PQF, Aditya will meet Rethin, Kriish meets 5th seeded Kazak, Hitesh meets Singaporean Chan, Aryan meets 9th seeded Russian and Cahir meets Chinese Jiang.

[jayakris]

That was an unbelievable upset by Maaya. The best prospect from among 14 year old Indian girls that I remember, since Sania.

[sameerph]

Maaya's winning streak grows to 23 but this time much closer 75 46 75 win over Seri Nayuki (JPN,279) in PQF. She will be up against 7th seed Gabia Paskauskas (GBR,130) in QF today.

In boys, Indian American Aditya Ganeshan beat Rethin in straights sets, Aryan beats 9th seeded Russian in straight sets and Cahir Wahik got a retirement after winning the first set against Chinese. Kriish and Hitesh lost to higher ranked players.

Cahir against top seed, 7th seed Aryan against 4th seed and 3rd seed Aditya against unseeded Singaporean in QF.

[jayakris]

Maaya went down to the 7th seed Gabia Paskauskas (GBR,279), 76(4) 26 46 at the KL J200 quarterfinals. I had kinda expected that she might run out of gas, having played so many matches recently, seeing the 3-set scoreline in yesterday's QF win. Gabia got lucky!

8th seeded Hikari Yamamoto (#140) and Rin Ito (#272) of Japan, and Maaya (#293) were the only 14 year olds there, those three being 2nd, 9th and 11th in the world among the 14 year olds in the ranking. Ito fell in the PQF and Hikari fell in the QF, both in listless straight sets losses. Maaya is the only one who came close to making even the semifinal, with a top-100 second seed upset along the way too. The points from here will move Maaya up to around #240 in the world, to the 7th spot among 14 year olds. Tremendous.

I am actually glad that she gets 2 or 3 days to rest, before the Nonthaburi Asian (closed) Junior championships J300 next week. Let us see how she does there.

[jayakris]

On the boys' side at the Kuala Lumpur J200, 7th seed Aryan Shah beat the 4th seed Imran Daniel Abdul Hazli (MAS,113) easily, 60 62 to make the semifinal. Cahir Warik lost to the top seed Janjun Kim (KOR,32), 57 16... Aryan vs Jangjun in one semifinal. 2nd seed Hayden Jones (AUS) plays the 3rd seed Indian American Adithya Ganesan in the other semifinal.

[sameerph]

Don't know what Aryan is gaining by playing these events instead of some mens futures as this is his last year in juniors. Maybe end the year with higher ITF junior rankings to gain special exempt next year. That is the only think I think of. He is quite a bit down in ITF junior rankings now at 142, got to check at what ranking level you get special exempts for juniors.

[jayakris]

^^^ Not sure why, but if he is going deep like this and playing top-40 quality junior guys like Jangjun Kim and Adhithya Ganesan, I won't complain. Getting enough matches against good players and fine tuning one's game (and confidence) is not a bad thing... By the way, USA's Adhithya is also 18 year old.

Terrific 60 61 semifinal win today by Aryan over the top seed Jangjun Kim (KOR,32) who is higher ranked than the highest ranking Aryan ever had, so it is really a notable win there if Jangjun was not injured or something. He plays the 3rd seed Adhithya Ganesan (USA,40) in the final.

Aryan and Adhithya (2nd seeds) won the doubles title also, today, beating a 6th seeded Kazakh team. Aryan/Adhi had beaten Kriish Tyagi and Cahir Warik in the semifinal yesterday.

[sameerph]

Adityhya Ganeshan beats Aryan Shah 6-2 6-3 to win J200 title in Malaysia.

Adithya will enter top 30 after this title. ATP gives 8 ITF M25 main draw spots for players with year end junior ranking of 20-30. So, Adithya may be aiming for that, if he can get into top 20, he will 8 challenger qualifying spots.

Aryan will get back to top 100, he may junior exempt spots in ITF M15 draws till the time he is in top 100 which will only be till December which does not mean much.

[jayakris]

Aleena Farid, and unseeded 13 year old Indian girl, won the J30 in Dhaka this week. She had upset the 14 year old Indian top seed Aradhyaa Verma in the second round. Aleena has only played 3 or 4 ITF events to start her junior career this year in India. I haven't checked where she is in AITA u12 rankings earlier, but I had not noticed her name yet. Okay, one more name to follow...

A big contingent of Indians are at the J300 Asian juniors in Nonthaburi, Thailand, this week....

[jayakris]

At the 48-player draw at ITF J300 Asian Juniors in Nonthaburi (THA), we had Aryan and Kriish as seeds, and Debasis, Rethin, Hitesh, Cahir, Ryan and Sehaj as direct entries. All three Indians in the qualies made the main draw too - Daksh Prasad, Vishal Prakash and Ved Shetty, all with two straight sets wins each. Vishal Prakash upset the 2nd seed in the qualies too. So a big group of 11 guys were in the first round where 6th seed Aryan and 10th seed Kriish had R1 byes. Out of the 9 guys who played today, 4 advanced - Rethin, Hitesh, Ved and Daksh. So 6 guys play the R32 tomorrow.

On the girls' side, Maaya is a the 14th seed, Prisha Shinde was almost the last direct entry, and Amodini Naik was in the qualies. Amodini qualified in, but both she and Prisha lost in the first round. So only Maaya is in the R32, with a bye. She plays a Thai wildcard and then may run into the 2nd seed.

[sameerph]

Of 6 Indian boys- 3 advanced to the PQF- 6th seed Aryan Shah and 10th seed Krish Tyagi both won in straight sets, qualifier Daksh Prasad upset 12th seeded Chinese in 3 sets. Hitesh, Rethin and Ved lost against seeds in straight sets. Both Aryan and Krish meet Kazakh players in the PQF- seeded 9th and 5th respectively. Daksh meets 8th seeded Chinese.

In girls, only Indian girl Maaya won 26 61 62 over a Thai wild card, she meets second seed Asylzhan Arystanbekova (KAZ,85)

[jayakris]

At the Nonthaburi Asian juniors, 6th seed Aryan beat the 9th seed Vitaliy Zatsepin (KAZ,170), 76(5) 61, and 10th seed Kriish Tyagi upset the 5th seed Danial Rakhmatullayev (KAZ,116) 63 36 64 to reach the QFs. They play the 13th seed and the 14th seed who came through at the top seed's and 2nd seed's spots. Aryan and Taianhui Zhang of China are in the doubles SF also. Aryan's run was expected, but Kriish reaching the QF is really great.

Maaya Rajeswaran went down after a massive fight, 46 76(4) 57 against the 2nd seed Asylzhan Arystanbekova (KAZ,85) who was 3 years older. I think Maaya is quite tired, as was clear even in last round's three-set win. But these are really incredible results from a 14 year old in a J300 event. She will move up from 238 to around 210 now, as #7 amongst players of her age in the world. And her ranking points are from 6 events since August. Two J60s each in India and Malaysia, one J200 in Malaysia and one J300 in Thailand. She can keep on going up the rankings, well into next year, and play anywhere in the levels J200 and above. She will be near top-150 at the start of the year.