Chennai, Oct 24:
Maj S. Maniam, consultant coach, Squash Rackets Federation of India has announced that the central government has agreed in principle to the programme of getting good overseas players to spar with Indians for at least 26 weeks in a year.
Addressing the media at a press conference here last night, Maniam said: “We are negotiating with the Malaysian player Ong Beng Hee, a former world number eight, for a two-week trip to India to play with the Indian talents. It could be in December-January period.”
He also said that as part of the development programme it was useful to have the players going abroad for exposure. But then cost constraints were there and a better idea discovered was to have a good foreign player to come to the Academy and spar with some of the best trainees.
“We found getting a good Egyptian player (Mazen) to spar with the Indian team members prior to the World Junior Championship (held in Namibia) were helpful. Kush Kumar in fact went on to become the first Indian male player to reach the semi-final in the world juniors,” he added.
Saying that Squash in India has never looked better the success at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games and Asian Games, Maniam said the SRFI believe that the happy tidings stems from the good training the players get, the excellent exposure to competitive events and overall a healthy development programme that has been charted out. (PTI)
Follow our WhatsApp channel