National Junior Championship from Aug 13

Chennai, Aug 10 (UNI) The cream of country's junior talent will be on view in the Adidas-MCC National Junior Clay court Tennis Championship to be held here from August 13 to 18.

Talking to newspersons here today, MCC President Premkumar Karra and Tournament Director Hiten Joshi said a record number of 600 entries had been received for the week-long event, the qualifying rounds of which would begin from tomorrow.

The events would be in Boys and Girls under-18 and under-14 singles and doubles with the main draw matches commencing from Monday.

Hosted by the MCC for the record 15th year in succession, the tournament had served as a springboard for many a players including the likes of Sania Mirza.

Players from about 20 states, including Jharkhand and Chattisgarh would be seen in action including top seed under-18 Vijayant Maik (Chandigarh), Abhijeet Tiwari (Chattisgarh) and Ronak Manuja (Maharashtra).

In the Girls under-18, V Archa (AP), Gopika Kapoor (Delhi), Tanvi R Shah (Maharashtra) and Rashmi Teltumbde were the players to watch.

The singles events would be a main draw of 64 in the boys and 48 in the girls.

The organisers also released the wild card entries. Mohit Mayur and S Siddarth (both TN), Lakshit Sood and Chandril Sood (both UP) in the under-18 boy's, Sharan Pal (TN), Sindana (TN), Aishwarya Agarwal (MP) Balsinder Kaur (Haryana) in the girls under-18, Monish Rajer (TN), H M Younus (TN), Anshu Kumar Bhuyan (Orissa), Raghav Lakotiya (Delhi) in the boy's under-14, Nitya Raj (TN), Ankita Bhatia (Haryana), Sharmada Balu (Karnataka) and Iktesh Chawal (Chandigrah) in the Girls under-14 were given the wild cards.

The matches in the first few days would be held in six venues and the finals at MCC courts on August 18.

UNI