Controversy erupted at the Senior National Badminton Championship on Thursday with defending champion Saina Nehwal refusing to play her singles match, citing a \u201cpoor playing surface\u201d at the venue here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Olympic bronze-medallist Saina, who had suffered a shin injury late last year, took the court after Sameer Verma conceded his men\u2019s singles tie following an Achilles\u2019 heels problem during his match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Up against Shruti Mundada in the pre-quarters, Saina had a look at the surface and immediately made it clear that she won\u2019t risk playing on it given that the All England Championship was around the corner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The officials, led by Badminton Association of India Secretary Omar Rashid, swung into action to sort out the issue. The BAI officials later convinced Saina, Kashyap and Sai Praneeth to play in the evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe wooden planks came out at a couple of places after Sindhu played her match. So, they are now going to fix it. We will come back in the evening to play our pre-quarterfinal matches,\u201d Saina\u2019s husband and fellow player Parupalli Kashyap said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kashyap, who was also there to play his men\u2019s singles pre-quarterfinal match, went to the adjacent second court and inspected that as well along with Saina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sindhu had competed on the same court in the morning, clinching a straight-game win over Malvika Bansod in the women\u2019s singles pre-quarterfinals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rashid said BAI will fix the courts and also make arrangements in the cement courts at the Tarun Ram Phookan indoor stadium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe surface became uneven at a couple of places, so three players have refused to play. We will fix the problem here and also make arrangements in the indoor stadium,\u201d Rashid said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Controversy erupted at the Senior National Badminton Championship on Thursday with defending champion Saina Nehwal refusing to play her singles match, citing a \u201cpoor playing surface\u201d at the venue here. Olympic bronze-medallist Saina, who had suffered a shin injury late last year, took the court after Sameer Verma conceded his men\u2019s singles tie following an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54957,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54958,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54956\/revisions\/54958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}