Pakistan-China Davis Cup tie schedule announced
Aqeel Khan will face Ze Zhangin in the first singles of Pakistan’s Davis Cup Asia/Oceania Group-I tie versus China in Sri Lanka.
_yu.jpg)
_ed.jpg)
Aqeel Khan will face Ze Zhangin in the first singles of Pakistan’s Davis Cup Asia/Oceania Group-I tie versus China in Sri Lanka.
According to draws released on Thursday, Yasir Khan will play against Di Wu in the second singles on the first day of the tie.
Pakistan are playing the first match of the round against China at the neutral venue of Sri Lanka from March 4-6.
The celebrated pair of Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi, who is also playing captain of the team in the absence of Rashid Malik, and Aqeel Khan will face the Chinese duo of Yan Bai and Mao-Xin Gong on the second day.
Aisam’s doubles ranking is 50, while the Chinese duo is ranked 143 and 142, respectively.
On the last day, Aqeel and Yasir will play reverse singles against Di Wu and Ze Zhang, respectively.
It is worth adding here that Pakistani team is without Samir Iftikhar and Abid Ali Akbar, who were key players considering the surface of Sri Lankan court.
Non-playing captain Rashid Malik has been dropped to the surprise of many.
According to Pakistan Tennis Federation (PTF), Abid and Samir did not appear in the trials, so they were not included.
Since Aisam is the playing captain so the need of Rashid Malik was not felt.
“PTF is facing acute shortage of funds. The reason behind not selecting Abid and Samir is that they wanted PTF to bear their travel expenses for coming from US for trials,” said a source.
The source added that PTF decided not to send Rashid as the non playing captain of the team due to shortage of funds. “This is very strange that our team is playing without a coach. This will affect the results,” added the source.
On the other hand, PTF is spending Rs4 million on holding this tie at the neutral venue. “The PTF decided this under pressure of Aisam who threatened to quit if Sri Lanka was not selected as the neutral venue,” said the source.
Most of the PTF officials wanted to send the team to China. “That would not have cost anything to PTF. And our players are good on hard courts,” added the source.
The source said the neutral venue and clay courts were not going to benefit Pakistan much because all the players of Chinese team are among top 200 players of the world which is a big edge.
“We still don’t have more than 20 percent chances of winning. It will be a miracle if we win against China,” said the source. This will be the sixth meeting between the two teams. China won the last encounter 5-0 in 2006.
(Source: The News)
