WTT Contender Tunis: Tough draws for Indian paddlers
Indian paddlers will be in action for the second successive WTT Contender event, this time at Tunisia.
Sreeja Akula and Manika Batra will take part at WTT Contender Tunis 2024. (File photo)
Top Indian paddlers will be in action at their second successive WTT Contender event scheduled from June 27 to 30 in Tunis, Tunisia.
Indian players tasted good success at the previous event and will kickstart their main round action from Thursday.
Tough draw for Sreeja Akula
The early rounds draws for the top Indian players at this event are very tricky, especially for last week's champion Sreeja Akula, who has drawn the second seeded Adriana Diaz of Puerto Rico as her potential second round matchup.
Sreeja will be aiming to extend her good run this year with another solid performance at the event whereas Manika Batra, Sharath Kamal will try to bounce back after the early exits last week.
Manika also has a tricky second round potential matchup against the winner of the match between Suthasini Sawetttabut of Thailand or Prithika Pavada of France.
On the other hand, Ayhika Mukherjee and Yashaswini Ghorpade to face players from the earlier qualifying round in their first round clash.
In men's singles, Sharath Kamal will be up against Eric Jouti of Brazil in the first round while Manav Vikas Thakkar will challenge the Canadian player Edward Ly in the first round of main draw.
Qualification action
Four Indian paddlers took part at the qualification rounds in search of a spot in the main draw.
Three out of these four players progresses through to the final qualifying round set to take place later in the evening.
Snehit Suravajjula is the only paddler so far that exited from the qualifying round after losing his second round match to Tobias Rasmussen of Denmark.
Meanwhile, Manush Shah won his second round match against Korean player Kim Minwoo. He will now be up against Tobias in the final qualifying round while Archana Kamath and Diya Chitale will face Slovakia's Nikoleta Puchovanova and Spain's Jana Riera in their respective final qualifying round matches.
Main draw entries
Men's singles: Sharath Kamal, Manav Thakkar, Harmeet Desai, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran
Women singles: Manika Batra, Sreeja Akula, Yashaswini Ghorpade, Ayhika Mukherjee
Men's doubles: Sathiyan-Harmeet, Manav-Sharath, Snehit-Manush
Women's doubles: Sreeja-Ayhika, Diya-Yashaswini, Archana-Manika
Mixed doubles: Harmeet-Ghorpade, Manush-Diya, Manav-Archana, Sathiyan-Sreeja, Snehit-Ayhika.