ITF junior tennis to start on January 18

Budding talents from eight countries will battle it out at the International Tennis Federation's (ITF) junior championships, starting here from January 18, the organisers announced on Friday.

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

Bengal Tennis Association (BTA) general secretary Hironmoy Chatterjee told media persons that the singles winner will grab 60 valuable rating 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 drawn in a pool of 32, and the doubles in a pool of 16. All matches will be decided in three tie-break sets.

The eight countries which will be participating in the tournament are the Great Britain, Thailand, Russia, Chinese Taipei, China, Israel, Korea, Serbia and India.

In the boys section Srivatsa Ratakonda, Shashank Theertha, Arghya Das and Devanand Mohan have been handed the wild cards.

For the girls category, the wild cards entrants are Mubashira Anjum, Yubrani Banerjee, Shivani Manjanna and Kaaviya Balasubramanian.