File photo of Sunayna Kuruvilla.
Forty six players from across the country will be vying for the top honours when the seventh edition of the Professional Squash Association Challenger Tour gets underway in Greater Noida on September 4.
A prize money of $12000 for women and $6000 for men will be at stake during the PSA tournament, which is part of the HCL Squash Podium Program.
The 'HCL-SRFI Indian Tour - Delhi NCR 2021' is the first event to be held after the COVID-19 forced break and will be held in a bio-secure environment at Shiv Nadar University.
Besides world No.77 Sunayna Kuruvilla and world No.86 Tanvi Khanna, Abhishek Agarwal, ranked 164th, will also be participating at the PSA Tour.
"The PSA tour is one of the strategic programs that is being conceptualised and run jointly to help Indian players improve their game and international ranking," Cyrus Poncha, Secretary-General, Squash Rackets Federation of India said in a release.
"The program has already improved the ranking of many players since its inception. For instance, Tanvi Khanna who was World Rank 98 and Velavan Senthilkumar who was World Rank 185 won the HCL-SRFI Indian Tour in Chennai held in August and are now ranked at 86 and 111 respectively.
"I am hopeful that HCL and SRFI together will continue to help promising players emerge as the next stars of Indian Squash."
The HCL Squash Podium Program was launched in 2019 and the first PSA tournament under this program was also held in Delhi NCR in August 2019. Since then, PSA Tours have been hosted across Chennai, Mumbai and Jaipur.
