Sindhu, Saina, and Srikanth bags direct entry into quarters of National Championship

Top three Indian shuttlers of BWF World Rankings will get direct entry into quarter-finals of National Championship which for the first time will be Rs 1 Crore prize money event.

Which implies that country's top players, World Championship Silver Medalist P V Sindhu (Ranked 2), bronze medalist Saina Nehwal (Ranked 12) in women’s singles and Kidambi Srikanth (Ranked 8) from men’s singles will be seen on the courts from the last eight, while, the same for H. S Prannoy (Ranked 15), B Sai Praneeth (Ranked 17), Sameer Verma (Ranked 19), and Ajay Jayaram (Ranked 20) in men’s section but limited to only maximum of eight slots out of sixteen.

BAI President Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “It will be mandatory for all the top ranked players to participate in the event. Those players who are in the world top-50, would get a direct entry into quarter-finals. However it will be limited to a maximum of eight slots out of a total of 16.”

Himanta goal is to motivate the emerging country shuttlers by conducting the national tournaments and making the senior players to mandatorily participate in it.

For the upcoming players who are experiencing financial constraints, Biswa announced scholarships. He said, “Most of the times, good talented players drop out of the game due to financial constraints. Hence to support such players, we will be providing a scholarship of Rs 25,000- 50,000 per month for about 20 juniors to begin with, and take the number upto 100.”

Sarma concluded talking about age-frauds saying, “We want to erase this over-age issue by conducting the tests well before the season so that no one should undergo the mental trauma during a tournament or a camp. If a player is found overage, we will put him/her in the next category as we think the parents are the culprits rather than the players themselves.”