Two squash players Covid positive, SRFI defers PSA meet

Express News Service

CHENNAI : The  resumption of international squash in India suffered a setback on Saturday as two Indian players tested positive for coronavirus. Just hours before the scheduled start of HCL SRFI Indian Tour Chennai Leg 1 — the first international squash tournament in the country since the lockodwn last year, the federation announced that the tournament has been postponed till Monday. The event was slated to commence on Saturday and conclude on Wednesday at the Indian Squash Academy in Chennai.

Forty eight players have registered for the event, including athletes from Canada, Egypt, France, Russia and the United States. It is understood that both the players tested negative for Covid- 19 before landing in Chennai on Friday. The first round of testing was done on Friday and the duo’s reports returned positive on Saturday morning.

Both have been withdrawn from the main draw and SRFI informed that another round of RT-PCR test will be done on Monday. It is understood around six players travelled in the same flight to Chennai with the duo who are positive. All of the 48 players, two physiotherapists and a doctor have been put up in single occupancy rooms at the Courtyard by Marriot hotel in the city. All of them began their isolation on Friday. “The two players who tested positive for coronavirus have been removed from the draw.

We will be conducting another round of testing on Monday morning, so that we can start the tournament by Monday evening,” Cyrus Poncha, SRFI secretary general, told this newspaper. It is for this very reason that the squash federation had waited for almost a year for the pandemic situation to get better before staging an event or even conducting a national camp when other sports had resumed the activities.

The racquet sport was one of the last disciplines to also start training and competitions. It was only in last October that the SRFI gave permission for the state associations to conduct closed championships. The PSA Challenge Tour event will now begin on Monday, with second round and quarterfinals scheduled to take place on Tuesday. Final will be on Thursday.