ITF Junior Championship to start Jan 19 in Kolkata

Budding talent from 15 countries will be seen in action at the the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Junior Tennis championship, starting here Jan 19, the organisers said Friday.

The six-day competition, set to end Jan 24, would be staged on five clay courts of the Dakshin Kalikata Sansad (DKS) sports complex.

English tennis star Tim Henman will inaugurate the event open to boys and girls who are born between Jan 1, 1997 and Dec 31, 2001.

Bengal Tennis Association general secretary Hironmoy Chatterjee told mediapersons that the singles winner will pocket 60 valuable points.

Each partner of the pair winning the doubles championship will get 50 points, the singles runners-up will collect 45 points, and each player in the losing finalist doubles team will bag 30.

The boys and girls singles will be a draw of 32, and the doubles 16.

Chatterjee said entries have been received from 15 countries, including Poland, Norway, Thailand, Africa, Brazil and Turkey.

The seeding has not yet been done as entry is still open for participants to register.

In boys category, Paras Dahiya, Siddhart Basnet, Parth Agarwal and Sumit Pal Singh have got the wild cards.

Karman Kaur Thandi, Nida Shahid, Pratyusha Rachapudi, Adrija Biswas and Shivani Mangana are the wild card entrants in the girls' contest.