Badminton selection: Saina Nehwal to skip Asian Games trials due to fitness reasons
New Delhi. Two-time Commonwealth Games champion Saina Nehwal will skip the national badminton selection trials for the Asian Games due to fitness reasons. The Badminton Association of India will conduct trials to select the team for the Asian Games from May 4 to 7 at the Jwala Gutta Academy in Telangana. The Asian Games will be played from September 23 to October 8 in Hangzhou, China. Badminton Association general secretary Sanjay Mishra told PTI, “Saina Nehwal will not participate due to fitness reasons.” Apart from this, Kushal Raj and Prakash Raj have also withdrawn their names from the trials. However, all the other players who were invited for the trial will participate in it.
Saina last played at the Orleans Masters. The former world number one, who has been battling injuries for some time, did not take part in the trials for the Badminton Asia Mixed Team Championships in January. She also missed the Commonwealth Games trials last year. The Badminton Association has released the men’s pair of PV Sindhu (world ranking 11), HS Prannoy (world ranking 9), Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy (world ranking 6) and women’s pair of Trisha Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand (world ranking 6) on the basis of their world rankings. The pair has been directly selected for the Asian Games.
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The list of players who participated in the selection trials for the Asian Games is as follows: Men’s Singles: Lakshya Sen, Kidambi Srikanth, Priyanshu Rajawat, Mithun Manjunath, Sai Praneeth, Maisnam Meeraba, Bharat Raghav, Ansal Yadav, Siddhant Gupta Women’s Singles: Akashi Kashyap, Malvika Bansod, Ashmita Chaliha, Aditi Bhat, Unnati Hooda, Alisha Naik, Shriyanshi Valishetty, Anupama Upadhyay Men’s doubles: MR Arjun/Dhruv Kapila, Krishna Prasad/Vishuvardhan, Suraj Gola/Prithvi Roy, Nitin HV/Sai Prateek. Women’s doubles: Ashwini Bhat/Shikha Gautam, Tanisha Crasto/Ashwini Ponnappa, Radhika Sharma/Tanvi Sharma Mixed doubles: Rohan Kapoor/Sikki Reddy, Sai Prateek/Tanisha Crasto, Hariharan/Varshini, Hemagendra Babu/Kanika Kanwal.
