CHENNAI: AFTER more than a year, the country’s top squash players will be regrouping for a national camp in the first week of April in Chennai. The Squash Federation of India (SRFI) confirmed that it will be a doubles-specific camp.The plan is to conduct the camp after the 2nd HCL SRFI Indian Tour — the first Professional Squash Association (PSA) Challenger event in India since the coronavirus pandemic — which will be held from March 27 to March 31 in Chennai.
As most of the top 15 players, barring a few, are from different parts of the country, the federation thought it will be ideal to hold a camp right away after the event than assemble them later to cut down the risk associated with travel during the pandemic.
The SRFI has sent out an email on Sunday to all the top players asking for their confirmation. The likes of Saurav Ghosal, Velavan Senthilkumar and Joshna Chinappa are expected to attend the camp. “We are looking at conducting a camp for top 13 players each from the men’s and women’s categories from April 1 for five days,” Cyrus Poncha, SRFI’s secretary-general, told this daily. “Since the top athletes will anyway be taking part in the PSA event in March, we thought it will be ideal for them to stay back and participate in the camp.”
The coaches at the Indian Squash Academy in Chennai will be in charge of the camp. Initially, there were plans of bringing in Australia David Palmer, who has conducted special camps in the past. However, it is understood that he has expressed inability to fly out of the country until June-July. The focus of the camp will be on trying out different combinations and how they play with each other with sights set on next year’s Asian Games and Commonwealth Games.
With the World Squash Doubles Championship also scheduled from July 1 to 5 in Gold Coast, Australia, the SRFI wanted to assess both the young and experienced players and how they compete together.
Following the short camp, players will be undergoing a technical assessment test at the Centre of Sports Science in Chennai. There are also plans of conducting a camp for the junior players later in April-May.