ICL Chennai Open PSA Squash Championship from Aug 13

Chennai, Aug 9 (UNI) India's Ritwik Bhattacharya has been given the pride of placings in the fifth ICL Chennai Open USD 6,000 prize money PSA Squash Championship to be held here from August 13 to 18.

Ritwik, who had just recovered from a knee surgery that kept him out of the last month's senior nationals, starts as favourite in the week-long event, but should to be wary of a strong Egyptian challenge, Squash Rackets Federation of India Secretary General N Ramachandran said here today.

With ten Egyptians in the fray, 60th ranked Ritwik, if all goes according to seedings, will meet second seeded Egyptian Mohd Ali Anwar (ranked 72) in the finals on August 18.

Ritwik would meet Gaurav Nandrajog in the first round and the top seed would be wary of his defeat at the hands of Gaurav in the last year's nationals semifinals.

Other Indians in fray included Harinderpal Singh, Naresh Kumar, Parth Sharma, Parthiban Ayyappan and Siddarth Suchde.

The foreign flavour included players from Hong Kong, Denmark, Lebanon and Iran.

Apart from the top two seeds and the Indians, the main draw field included Dick Lau (Hong Kong), Jonas Laursen (Denmark), Omar Tarek Mahm Aly (Egypt) and Karim A G A Samy (Egypt).

UNI