Leander Paes Returns As India Announce Davis Cup Squad For Tie Against Pakistan

Leander Paes

The All India Tennis Association (AITA) has named the Davis Cup team for the Asia/Oceania Group 1 Tie against Pakistan scheduled to be held on the 29th and 30th of November, 2019.

The veteran tennis star Leander Paes has made a comeback to the Indian team after a gap of one year along with Sumit Nagal, who was recently into the news for beating Roger Federer in the first set of the first round of US Open. Sumit, however, eventually lost that match as Federer took the next three sets to advance to the next round.

The AITA selection committee met on Thursday and Rohit Rajpal, the non-playing captain of the Indian Davis Cup squad, refused to chair the meeting to avoid any conflict of interest issue. Later, the former national coach Balram Singh was chosen to preside over the meeting.

Originally, the Davis Cup tie was to be played in Islamabad on the 13th and 14th of September, 2019. However, the match was later rescheduled for 29th and 30th of November at the same venue following the security review in Pakistan by the International Tennis Federation.

As ITF looked reluctant to shift the venue out of Pakistan, the previous Indian captain Mahesh Bhupati, along with a few other players, decided not to participate in the event.

AITA subsequently removed Bhupathi as the captain of the team and replaced him with Rohit Rajpal. However, just as they did that, the ITF relocated the match to a neutral venue.

It has, however, not been decided yet which country would eventually host the tie. A final announcement regarding that is likely to be made by the ITF on 18th of November.

Here is the Indian squad that has been named by AITA –

  1. Rohit Rajpal – Non-Playing Captain
  2. Rohan Bopanna
  3. Sumit Nagal
  4. Ramkumar Ramanathan
  5. Saketh Myneni
  6. Leander Paes

 

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