Visas in process for India for Davis Cup tie

ISLAMABAD: The Indian tennis authorities have sent the renewed list of team members along with the documents for  issuing the visas for the November 29-30 Davis Cup tie against Pakistan.

The fresh list dispatched on Thursday to the Pakistan Tennis Federation (PTF) sees Leander Adrian Paes replacing Mahesh Bhupathi as the non-playing captain.

The team members are Saketh Sai Myneni, Suresh Kumar Manish, Rawat Sidharth, Arjun Jayant Kadhe, Sri Ram Balaji and Sasikumar Mukund.

Syed Zeeshan Ali will accompany the team as coach, Anand Kumar as physiotherapist, and Sunder Narayan Iyer as manager.

Despite many reminders by the Pakistan Tennis Federation (PTF) to the ITA to furnish details of the team members along with the travelling documents for early completion of the visa formalities, the neighbouring country’s tennis authorities were reluctant to oblige, which forced the PTF to write a letter to the Davis Cup Committee through International Tennis Federation (ITF).

The letter written to ITF last week bore fruit as the ITA finally sent revised team names with all the relevant documents for the visa.

“We have finally received the required documents from them. Ever since the ITF Committee has changed the dates of the tie, we have kept on reminding them to furnish details of the visiting team members,” Salim Saifullah Khan, president PTF, told The News.

“As a last resort, we moved to the ITF Committee and only today we received details of the visiting squad along with the details,” he added.

“We have started visa seeking process. When it comes to getting visas for Indian nationals, everyone knows the process is lengthy. Still we would do all we could to complete everything in time,” he said.