Saina Nehwal would look to boost her confidence ahead of the London Olympics when she starts as the top seed at the Thailand Grand Prix Gold beginning with the qualifiers in Bangkok on Tuesday, says newspaper reports.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Olympic-bound shuttler, ranked fifth in the world, will start her campaign against local player Nichaon Jindapon in the women\u2019s singles on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
With the top four Chinese players missing in action, it will be a good opportunity for the Indian ace to register a win and boost confidence after suffering a shock exit at home in the India Open Super Series in April. Local stars Ratchanok Inthanon and Porntip Buranaprasertsuk have been handed the second and third seeds respectively while rising Indian shuttler P V Sindhu is seeded fourth in the tournament,\u201d says a report in The Times Of India.<\/strong><\/p>\n Sindhu, who reached the quarterfinals of the India Open in April, will start her campaign against Anu Nieminen of Finland. Beside Saina, four other Indians — P Kashyap, Jwala Gutta, Ashwini Ponnappa and V Diju — had also qualified for the Olympics but they would skip the Thai Open and play the next two events in Indonesia and Singapore.<\/p>\n Meanwhile The Tribune <\/strong>reports that Sindhu, who reached the quarterfinals of the India Open in April, will start her campaign against Anu Nieminen of Finland. Beside Saina, four other Indians – P Kashyap, Jwala Gutta, Ashwini Ponnappa and V Diju – had also qualified for the Olympics but they would skip the Thai Open and play the next two events in Indonesia and Singapore.<\/p>\n In the men’s singles, 12th seed Indian Sourabh Verma will take on Indonesian Sukamta Evert, B Sai Praneeth will face off Wisnu Yuli Prasetyo of Indonesia while Anand Pawar will meet France’s Brice Leverdez, seeded ninth. RMV Gurusaidutt, seeded 14th, will start his campaign against Malaysian Goh Soon Huat, while Sameer Verma will take on 11th seed Tanongsak Saensomboonsuk of Thailand and K Srikanth wil meet Zulfadli Zulkiffli. Arun and Aparna will also pair up for India in the mixed doubles competition. <\/p>\n Meanwhile SAI shoots down NRAI plan to pass off officials as coaches, says a report in Hindustan Times. <\/strong>Sources told HT that a majority of the nine coaches due to accompany the 27-member squad are office-bearers of the NRAI or state associations and they cannot be cleared as per SAI guidelines. \u201cWe have asked them to adhere to the government guidelines and also reduce the number of coaches to four,\u201d said a SAI official. \u201cIt is not possible to meet the criteria framed by SAI, so we will not send any junior team till such time the two bodies finalise a mutually-agreeable policy,\u201d said Jagjit in his letter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Saina Nehwal would look to boost her confidence ahead of the London Olympics when she starts as the top seed at the Thailand Grand Prix Gold beginning with the qualifiers in Bangkok on Tuesday, says newspaper reports. \u201cThe Olympic-bound shuttler, ranked fifth in the world, will start her campaign against local player Nichaon Jindapon in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[993,280,1891,925,4874,1313],"class_list":["post-7033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-from-the-newspapers","tag-jwala-gutta","tag-london-olympics","tag-p-kashyap","tag-saina-nehwal","tag-thailand-grand-prix-gold","tag-v-diju"],"yoast_head":"\n
Among other Indians, men’s doubles pair of Tarun Kona and Arun Vishnu and young combo of S Sanjeeth and Jagadish Yadav will also play in the tournament. In women’s doubles, India’s Aparna Balan and N Siki Reddy and the young pair of Pradnya Gadre and Prajakta Sawant will look to show their mettle at the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose coaches, not adhering to the government criteria, can still accompany the team but at the federation’s cost,\u201d said the official. SAI’s directive has not gone down well with the federation. In a communication, dated May 31, the NRAI joint secretary general, Jagjit Singh, has threatened to withdraw the team from the competitions.<\/p>\n