Fed Cup tennis: Further twist to the sorry tale, India in tough pool with New Zealand NEW DELHI, FEB. 3: The Kazakhstan Tennis Association did manage to send the invitation for visa on arrival for the Indian Fed Cup team captain Enrico Piperno and two players Prerna Bhambri and Shweta Rana, but it arrived too late on Sunday evening for the Indian counterparts to make necessary arrangements. To add insult to injury, the captains name was also spelt as Peperno, in the official document from Kazakhstan. The ITF representative in Kazakhstan for the Fed Cup, Alex Hughes, had made considerable effort to assemble the Indian team in strength. Thus, while Sania Mirza joined the team on Monday, as scheduled, the rest who were battling the visa issues could not make the trip. Three other leading players, Ankita Raina, Prarthana Thombare and Rishika Sunkara along with coach Shalini Thakur and physio Anand Kumar Dubey had already reached Astana on Sunday. They had been stranded in Almaty on Saturday night as they had missed the connecting flight, owing to the delayed landing of their flight from Delhi. Meanwhile, the Indian team found itself in a tough pool with New Zealand, spearheaded by the 48th ranked Marina Erakovic who had beaten Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia in the French Open second round last year, and had also made the third round of Wimbledon. India will open its campaign on Tuesday with a match against Iran. It will be followed by the matches against Pakistan and New Zealand in that order. With 13 teams competing in four pools, the topper from each pool after the league phase, will make it for the knock-out stage. The winner of group II will get promoted to group I. The groupings: Pool-A: Hong Kong, Malaysia and Vietnam. Pool-B: Philippines, Singapore and Sri Lanka. Pool-C: Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Iraq. Pool-D: India, Iran, New Zealand and Pakistan.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Feb 2014 00:52:54 +0000
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