Imphal, February 15: All India Tennis Association (AITA) ranking championship has kicked off today at the Officers' Club tennis court h at Lamphelpat here without any player of Manipur.

The 4 lakh cash prize championship is being organized by Manipur Tennis Association (MATA) under the auspices of AITA and sponsored by ONGC and OIL.

In this tourney the two events are men's open singles and men's open doubles.

In singles 32 players are participating and in doubles 16.The prize money is for singles first position Rs 52,000, second Rs 36,000, third and fourth Rs 19,200, fifth to eight Rs 11,600, ninth to sixteenth Rs 8,000 and seventeen to thirty-one Rs 4,700.The doubles cash prizes are first Rs 25,200, second Rs 13,200, third and fourth Rs 10,400 and fifth to eight Rs 7,200.Manipur chief secretary Jarnail Singh opened the championship this morning.

In the men's open single matches, fourth seed Vinod Sridhar beat 71st seed LS Anantha 6-3, 6-3; fifth seed Vijay Kannan bear Arvind Sharma 6-3, 6-2 while sixth seed Vishal Uppal beat 36th seed Yaseer Arafat Md 6-3, 6-2 to enter next round.

7th seed Ajay Ramaswami beat 56th seed Ankit Patel (6-1, 6-2), 63rd seed Jitin Bishnoi beat 56th seed Alon Moses (6-2, 6-2), 10th seed Kamala Kannan defeated 39th seed Yannick Nelord ( 3-6, 7-5, 6-3), 20th seed Arjun Goutham beat 39th seed Varun Walia (7-5, 6-3), 56th seed Vijay Sunder Prashan defeated non-seeded Pillai Gajpathy (6-0, 6-3), 26th seed Saurav Sukuk beat 56th seed Manchit Madan (6-2, 2-6, 6-1), non-seeded Anshuman Dutta beat 56th seed Rahit Makharia (4-6, 6-3, 6-4) and 19th seed VM Ranjit beat 54th seed Venkatesh (6-4, 7-6) to enter next round.

None of the three players who were in qualifying round could qualify for the championship.

Comment