Shalini Thakur sees a bright future for the Indian women’s team
The Hindu
Shalini Thakur sees a bright future for the Indian women’s team
After a bright start, when it beat Thailand and Uzbekistan, the Indian team could not find its way past China and Japan in the Billie Jean King Cup women’s tennis event in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. It had to stay content in the Asia-Oceania group-1.
“After qualifying to group-1 in 2015, the girls have done a tremendous job over the years to sustain the level and stay in the top group. We did make it to the World Group play-off two years ago”, observed the captain of the team, Shalini Thakur Chawla.
There was not much at stake in the last tie against Korea, in the round-robin format, but India held the fortunes of teams both for qualification and relegation.
Shalini commended Ankita Raina and the team for putting up a quality performance and competing hard against strong opponents.
“On the last day, we were safe. But it was not the case for Korea. A win would put them in World Group play-off and a loss against us could mean relegation”, pointed out Shalini, on the drama of the last day.
China had underestimated Korea and had rested its main players Xinyu Wang and Yue Yuan for singles, and paid for it. Dayeon Back and Kim Dabin won the singles matches for Korea against China. As luck would have it, Korea lost to Thailand. After being tied with same number of wins, Korea got past China, by virtue of having beaten it.
“On the last day, it rained all morning. There was only one indoor court, and we played Korea on that. We decided to rest Ankita who had played her heart out in all the matches and give Vaidehi Chaudhari a chance. Vaidehi did well to fight back from 0-5 to 4-5 in the third set. Rutuja Bhosale made it 1-1, and we couldn’t pull it off in doubles”, said Shalni.
Asian Games champion Avinash Sable opened his season in the 3000m steeple chase with a silver in the Portland Track Festival, a World Athletics Continental Tour bronze event, in Oregon on Saturday. He clocked 8:21.85s. Asian champion Parul Chaudhary took the bronze in the women’s 3000m steeple chase in a season-best 9:31.38s. Former Asian bronze medallist Sanjivani Jadhav struck gold in the women’s 10,000m in 32:22.77s, a time which was a second off her personal best, while Seema was sixth in 32:55.91s.