Saina injures groin, likely to miss Asian Team Championships

Vinayak Padmadeo

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 2

Saina Nehwal is likely to sit out of the Asian Team Championships after she injured her groin during her quarterfinal loss to Beiwen Zhang of USA in the India Open on Friday.

Saina, who wasn’t moving well and looked sluggish during her brief stay of 32 minutes, said she developed the groin problem during the match. The full extent of her injury will be assessed by physio C Kiran on Saturday, and if the problem persists, she may have to undergo further scans to know the exact extent of the injury.

When asked about her availability for the Asian Team Championships, which starts in Alor Setar, Malaysia, from February 6, Saina said she has written to the Badminton Association of India (BAI) to allow her to skip the event.

“After ankle I have this groin issue now. I have requested BAI to allow me to skip,” she said before leaving the venue on Friday.

BAI insistent

BAI, meanwhile, is insistent that India be represented at the Malaysian event by their top players. In a letter to all the selected players on February 1, BAI secretary Anup Narang “firmly requested” them to make themselves available for the Asian event.

“Asian Championships is a tournament which is the official qualifier for the Thomas and the Uber Cup world group championships. All the top Asian countries like China, Japan, Malaysia, Korea, Thailand and Indonesia are sending their full strength team. Keeping this in mind, BAI has clearly taken this point that we have to send our full strength team,” Narang told The Tribune.

“That is why we have requested all the players, rather written to them, that since the entries have gone now, names cannot be withdrawn. All the players must go for this event. We know that there can be an exception if there’s an injury but if all the players are in form, and not injured, the national duty must be given priority without any doubt,” he added. 

Interestingly, BAI included all the top stars including Saina and PV Sindhu at the last moment.

Results

PV Sindhu bt Beatriz Corrales 21-12 19-21 21-11, Qiao Bin bt Parupalli Kashyap 21-16 21-18, Chou Tien Chen bt B Sai Praneeth 21-15 21-13, Iskandar Zulkarnain bt Kidambi Srikanth 21-19 21-17, Marcus Fernaldi Gideon/Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo bt Manu Attri/B Sumeeth Reddy 21-19 21-19, Du Yue/Li Yinhui bt Ashwini Ponnappa/N Sikki Reddy 

Dasan wins 60m bronze in national record time 

Tehran: India’s Elakiya Dasan won the bronze medal in the men’s 60m sprint event with a national record time in the Asian Indoor Athletics Championships. Dasan clocked 6.67s to finish behind local runner Taftian (6.51s) and Qatar’s Ogunode Tosinjoseph (6.63m). The earlier indoor national record in the men’s 60m stood in the name of Sameer Mon who clocked 6.87s in 2009. Dasan, however, missed the World Indoor Championships qualification standard of 6.63s. The Indoor Worlds will be held in Birmingham from March 1-4. PTI