NAGPUR: Experienced city coach
Ajay Dayal
has been appointed as the coach of the Indian team which will participate in the
Badminton Asia Junior U-17 and U-15 Championships slated to be held at Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia from December 11 to 15.
The
Badminton Association of India
(BAI) has announced the big team of around 50 players for the annual tournament. To cater to the huge Indian squad, the
BAI
has also named a strong team of ten coaches which will be led by chief national junior coach Sanjay Mishra. Dayal is one of the coaches of ten-member team and he is the only from Maharashtra as coach.
Although, there will be no Nagpur player in the jumbo Indian squad, few Pune and Mumbai players have made it to the Indian side. Pune's Tara Shah and Mumbai's Manya Avlani have been named in the U-15 girls singles, while Pune duo of Riya Habbu and Varun Kapur were picked in the U-17 girls and U-17 boys singles team. There is no Maharashtra player in the three doubles categories.
Dayal is very happy to get a chance to do Indian duty and looking forward to the new challenge.
"This is my third assignment as coach of India. I was one of the coaches during the Veterans World Championships held at Kochi (India) in 2017. Last year, I supervised the Under-15 national camp at Bengaluru," Dayal told TOI on Friday.
A former national-level player, Dayal runs his badminton academy at the YMCA Hall, Civil Lines.
So far, Dayal has produced three international players -- Ritika Thaker, Sourabh Kerhalkar and Rohan Gurbani. Doubles specialist Ritika has been doing quite well and recently reached the women's doubles quarterfinals at the Syed Modi International tournament at Lucknow.
"It is a very good opportunity for me to guide the Indian players during the Asian Junior Championship in Indonesia next week. It will be a huge confidence booster for me. The new experience will help me in future. I want to thank MBA president Arun Lakhani and MBA secretary Mangesh Kashikar," said Dayal.
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