BAI rejects shuttlers' charge of Asia C'ship snub

The Badminton Association of India (BAI) on Monday rubbished claims of Indian shuttlers H.S. Prannoy and B. Sai Praneeth that administrative goof-ups had robbed them of participation at the Asia Badminton Championship.

"Based on the e-mail received from Badminton Asia, we were asked to send names of two players each for men singles, women's singles; three names each for men's and women's doubles and 4 players for mixed doubles" BAI said in a statement.

"The draw that was published based on the world ranking of players, mentioned Srikanth (world ranking 6) and Verma (world ranking 11) in the main draw as per the ranking eligibility list published by Badminton Asia and the same was followed to send the players for the Championships," it said.

India will be represented by Kidambi Srikanth and Sameer Verma in men's singles at the event in Wuhan, China, starting Tuesday. Allegedly, the BAI didn't confirm entries of Prannoy and Praneeth to organisers.

Prannoy had been battling a gastroesophageal reflux disease since last year and thus missed out on a lot of time. He reached the quarterfinals at India Open, but with this, he won't have the chance to defend his semifinal ranking points.

"Almost 10 entries have been missed even though players had sent their names before the deadline and they are not even apologising for it," Prannoy claimed. He also alleged due to late ticket confirmation, travelling for tournaments too had become difficult.

According to him, they were stranded in Hong Kong during the Asia Mixed team championship, apparently, due to another BAI goof-up.

"When we went to Hong Kong for ABC mixed team event, we were stranded at the airport for two hours. There was no transportation for us because BAI didn't send the request to the organisers," he said.

"The BAI official sent in the transportation request for Hong Kong event in the form of Wuhan event (individual event). Can you imagine that?," Prannoy said.

--IANS

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