VISAKHAPATNAM: Two coaches of the Sports Authority of Andhra Pradesh (SAAP) have landed in the soup over the mix-up of tennis star Sania Mirza’s poster, set up on the occasion of the National Sports Day celebrations. The poster near the Kurusura Submarine, that attracts sizeable tourists, at Beach Road, carried the picture of the tennis star but it was captioned in bold: P T Usha, Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri, Arjuna Award. As is well known, Usha is India’s former sprint queen.
The gaffe left the sports authorities red-faced and set the social media abuzz with comments from twitterati on the ignorance of the organisers. Soon after the flexi blooper went viral, joint collector L Siva Sankar issued show cause notice to two SAAP coaches on Thursday.
Speaking to TNIE, a source from the sports department said, “A team, including coaches who have the knowledge of major sporting stars, a list of names, whose portraits were to adorn the venue of celebrations, was prepared and sent for digital printing.
During editing, some names were dropped and others, like those of Sania Mirza and PT Usha were included. There were some editing mistakes and we immediately corrected them. But the mistake slipped through the digital printers.”