Saina Nehwal, Malvika Bansod opt out of Asia Championships trials

Olympic medalist Saina Nehwal and rising star Malvika Bansod on Monday opted out of the national tryouts for the Badminton Asia Mixed Team Championships 2023A 14person Indian squad will be chosen at the tryouts to compete in the forthcoming Badminton Asia Mixed Team Championships in Dubai from February 14 to 19The trials which were originally scheduled to take place over two days on January 2 and 3 have been reduced to a single day by the Badminton Association of India BAI due to withdrawalsDue to their superior BWF World Rankings PV Sindhu Lakshya Sen HS Prannoy and the mens doubles team of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairak Rankireddy all received automatic admission into the squadAlso readSaina Nehwal named for selection trials of Asian Mixed Team ChampionshipSaina Nehwal who won bronze at the London 2012 Olympics has struggled with her form of late and only advanced to one quarterfinal out of the 14 tournaments she competed in 2022The previous world champion last claimed victory on the BWF World Tour in 2019 when she defeated Carolina Marin to claim the Indonesia Masters crown Since then Sainas rankings have plummeted and she is now ranked 31st in womens singlesIn the tryouts Saina was expected to square off against upandcomers in Aakarshi Kashyap and Malvika Bansod in an effort to replace PV Sindhu as the teams second womens singles player as per the Olympics websiteHowever Bansod too decided to pull out of the trials leaving only Aakarshi Aakarshi has been invited to compete with Ashmita Chaliha for the positionThere have additionally been other withdrawals MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila wont participate in the trials as the forner is injuredDue to the unavailability of the pair Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy will be joined by the winner of the trial match between Krishna Prasad GargaVishnuvardhan Goud Panjala and Ishaan BhatnagarSai Patheek KFormer bronze medalists from the Commonwealth Games Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy will not compete in the trials as they split up a few months agoThere are two slots up for grabs in womens doubles and the worlds number 17 team of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand will be the favourites to win one of them Ashwini BhattShikha Gautam and Haritha ManazhiyilAshna Roy will compete for the otherThe pairs vying for the mixed doubles spot are Ishaan BhatnagarTanisha Crasto and the recently created team of Rohan KapoorN Sikki ReddyThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever