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India’s Thomas and Uber Cup 2018 campaign got off to a miserable start on Sunday with both the men’s and the women’s teams succumbing to 1-4 defeats to France and Canada respectively. But what was astonishing was the absence of many of the key players in the men’s team in India’s opening tie.
The national men’s doubles champions, Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy were expected to shoulder the responsibility in doubles. The resurgent former India No. 1 pair had a fabulous show in New Zealand and Australia in the past couple of weeks. At Auckland, they reached the quarter-finals and at Sydney, they went one better by making it to the semi-finals, that also saw them finishing as the best performing Indians.
The massive efforts also hauled them up by six places to World No. 22 in the rankings and they are now just five places shy of matching their career-best ranking of 17th. Having gained so much confidence ahead of the prestigious biennial team championships, Manu and Sumeeth were expected to play a pivotal role for India.
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Instead, the pairs of MR Arjun-Shlok Ramchandran and Arun George-Sanyam Shukla were fielded against France and both failed to taste success.
It was being speculated that Attri and Reddy did not travel to Bangkok because Attri was injured. On being contacted by Sportskeeda, Reddy confirmed those rumours. Attri has unfortunately suffered a shin muscle tear during the Australian Open, Reddy revealed.
“Yeah, he is injured,” said Reddy. “He had pain since Australia and later when we came to India and took MRI, it showed shin tear,” he explained.
On being asked what course of treatment Attri is following, Reddy replied, “He is taking full time treatment with his physio. Shin muscle tear is a very rare case and has to be treated with utmost care.”
The 26-year-old was highly disappointed to have missed out on playing for India at the Thomas Cup. He rued not being able to fetch that vital one point for India against France.
“It’s just sad that by missing Thomas Cup, we couldn’t get that 1 point for India against France which could have changed the tie,” he lamented.
