Wimbledon doubles champion Matthew Ebden was drafted into the Gurgaon Sapphires team for the Pro Tennis League, in the auction hosted at the RK Khanna Stadium on Sunday.
The newly crowned National champion Manish Sureshkumar along with Ishaque Eqbal, Riya Bhatia and Aman Dahiya got into the Proveri Super Smashers team for the eight-team competition.
Davis Cup coach Zeeshan Ali was taken by Rajasthan Tigers, as the teams have a mix of professional players apart from juniors and seniors.
“It is a good chance for everyone. Pros like Matthew Ebden and Ramkumar Ramanathan will impart knowledge to the youngsters”, said Zeeshan.
“The PTL is a great platform for the youngsters to rub shoulders with pro players and gain experience”, said Davis Cup captain Rohit Rajpal.
“We are excited to host the best of players in this edition of PTL. Our main motive is to promote the youngsters and build a healthy tennis ecosystem”, said the promoter of the event, Aditya Khanna.
The teams:
Proveri Super Smashers: Manish Sureshkumar, Ishaque Iqbal, Riya Bhatia, Aman Dahiya, Parv Nage, Hitakamya Singh Narwal, Kamlesh Shukla, Mohit Phogat.
Lucknow Aviators: Sriram Balaji, Siddharth Vishwakarma, Sravya Shivani, Adil Kalyanpur, Yuvan Nnadal, Diva Bhatia, Pradeep Pant, Nishant Goel.
DMG Crusaders: Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan, Niki Poonacha, Jennifer Luikham, Anirudh Chandrasekar, Neeraj Yashpaul, Kavya Khirwar, Aditya Khanna, Swarandeep Singh Dhodi.
Meerut Stag Babolat Yoddhas: Arjun Kadhe, Vijay Sundar Prashanth, Kashish Bhatia, Ajay Malik, Denim Yadav, Riya Sachdeva, Vijayant Malik, Punar Bhasin.
Jodhpur Sankara: Divij Sharan, Digvijay Pratap Singh, Sathwika Sama, Parikshit Somani, Maanav Jain, Yashaswini Singh Panwar, Arjun Uppal, Ashish Khanna.
Bangalore Challengers: Ramkumar Ramanathan, Rishi Reddy, Sahaja Yamalapalli, Prithvi Sekhar, Sarthak Suden, Sachi Sharma, Vivek Shokeen, Rishi Kapur.
Gurgaon Sapphires: Matthew Ebden, Nitin Kumar Sinha, Sharmada Balu, VM Ranjeet, Bushan Haobam, Mahika Khanna, Saurabh Singh, Rohan Bhasin.
Rajasthan Tigers: Vishnu Vardhan, SD Prajwal Dev, Vanshika Choudhary, Karan Singh, Shivank Bhatnagar, Sahira Singh, Zeeshan Ali, Manav Modi.
