Asia Cup remains a non-starter

New Delhi, November 24: The first event of the new Asian Tennis tour scheduled to be held in December, the Asia Cup, has been cancelled due to non-availability of funds and top players. The tour, launched earlier this year by Anil Khanna, secretary general of the All India Tennis Association and president of the Asian Tennis Federation, was supposed to provide more opportunities for players from the Asian region, but now it will have to wait till next year.

The men’s event was scheduled to be held in Pune from December 27-30, and Somdev Devvarman and Prakash Amritraj had already confirmed their availability. Indore was supposed to be the venue for the women’s meet, but that too, has been taken off this year’s calendar.

“The All India Tennis Association has not remitted the money to the Asian Tennis Federation (ATF), so the ATF will not be approving it. The ATF is a sanctioning body, they need the funds well in advance.

“This was being done under the Commonwealth Games scheme of the government, and the Government is still formalising the scheme, they are approving everything, so it will take some more time. The time is too short to remit the money to the Asian body. December is too soon now, so for this year both the men’s and women’s Asia Cup will be cancelled. We can’t do it in January or February 2009 either because it has to be a year-end event,” Anil Khanna told The Indian Express.

Some of the eight countries participating were also believed to have nominated their lower rung of players for the event, another possible cause for the cancellation of the $100,000 meet.

Ads By Google

Message*	Maximum characters allowed

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*

TERMS OF USE:
The views, opinions and comments posted are your, and are not endorsed by this website. You shall be solely responsible for the comment posted here. The website reserves the right to delete, reject, or otherwise remove any views, opinions and comments posted or part thereof. You shall ensure that the comment is not inflammatory, abusive, derogatory, defamatory &/or obscene, or contain pornographic matter and/or does not constitute hate mail, or violate privacy of any person (s) or breach confidentiality or otherwise is illegal, immoral or contrary to public policy. Nor should it contain anything infringing copyright &/or intellectual property rights of any person(s).

I agree to the terms of use.

Mail this page