Pradhan, Joshi top seeds in 4th NSCI Open squash

Abhishek Pradhan and Urwashi Joshi, both of Maharashtra have been given the pride of place in the men’s and women’s events respectively in the 4^th NSCI All India Open (Junior and Senior) Squash Tournament 2019, which is scheduled to commence from Saturday, June 1 to Wednesday, June 5, 2019. The five-day tournament is being organized by NSCI with LIC of India as the co-partner and will be conducted under the auspices of SRFI.

The highlight of this year’s event is that NSCI is especially erecting an outdoor all glass (four-sided) court to provide the players, and especially the talented upcoming youngsters to have an experience of playing in an open court and in front of spectators who will be watching from all sides of the court. Besides the outdoor court, matches would also be played on the clun’s four indoor courts.

The sixth-ranked Indian, Pradhan, is followed by Abhishek Agarwal also of Maharashtra as the second seed. Naveen Jangra of Services and Rahul Baitha are the joint third and fourth seeds.

In the women’s draw, India’s second-ranked Joshi tops the seeding list ahead of sixth ranked Sachika Balvani also from Maharashtra. Madhya Pradesh’s Radhika Rathore and Maharashtra’s Sanika Choudhari are jointly seeded third and fourth.

Competitions will also be conducted for boys’ and girls’ in the U-11, U-13, U-15, U-17 and U-19 age categories. This will be a direct knockout format.

This is a new high for NSCI, as this is probably the first club in the city to hold a national-level domestic tournament for Indian players in an all-glass court.

Leading junior boys and girls and the top-ranked men and women squash players from the country will be fighting it out for the top prize in the Rs 550,000 prize money (Rs 400,000 for the junior events and Rs 150,000 for the senior category) tournament. A total of 383 players have confirmed their participation in the various events of this tournament.

Squash enthusiasts can closely follow all the squash action as arrangements have been made for ‘live’ streaming of matches on YouTube, Facebook and India Squash TV.

Seedings

Girls’ Under-19: 1. Navmi Sharma (MH), 2. Tanaya M. Parakh (WB), 3 /4-Bhavna Goyal (MH), Sparshi Mattas (GA).

Boys’ Under-19: 1. Utkarsh Baheti (RJ), 2. Rahul Baitha (MH), 3 /4-Veer Chotrani (MH), Yash Fadte (GA).

Women: 1. Urwashi Joshi (MH), 2. Sachika Balvani (MH), 3 /4- Radhika Rathore (MP), Sanika Choudhari (MH).

Men: 1. Abhishek Pradhan (MH), 2. Abhishek Agarwal (MH), 3/ 4-Naveen Jangra (SE), Rahul Baitha (MH).