Saurav spreaheads Indian team for World Squah champ

CHENNAI: Saurav Ghosal, highest ranked Indian at 49 in the world, will spearhead the country's five-member team in the 21st ICL World Men's Team Squash Championship to be played here from December 6 to 12.

Former national champion Ritwik Bhattacharya (ranked 72), who is all set for the event after his good performance in Malaysia and Hong Kong earlier this month, Siddharth Suchde (148), Gaurav Nandrajog (141) and Harinderpal Singh Sandhu, who is the non-playing reserve, are the other members of the team, announced by the Squash Rackets Federation of India (SRFI) here on Wednesday.

Ghosal, who reached his career best ranking of 40 in April last, participated in 11 PSA events, winning the Chennai Open. He also qualified for the main draw of the Hong Kong Open, British Open and Tournament of Champions.

Suchde, who graduated from Harvard this year, has shown promise by making the main draw in three PSA major events and jumped 196 places from 344 in September this year to 148 now.
  
Nandrajog too had performed well this year and had made the quarterfinals in two of the six PSA events.
  
Major S Maniam and Cyrus Poncha would be the Manager and Coach of the team respectively, SRFI Secretary General N Ramachandran said in a release.

The team was selected on the basis of their performance in domestic and international tournaments.