Top badminton stars for Bangalore ranking tournament

Over 600 players, including the country's top stars, will be participating in the Canara Bank All India Senior Ranking badminton tournament to be held here from Feb 4 to 8.

Prakash Padukone, whose Padukone sports Management is conducting the event, told media persons here Monday that the Badminton Association of India (BAI) is contributing Rs.five lakh towards the prize-money.

The qualifying rounds are scheduled for Feb 4 and 5, while the main draw commences on Feb 6, Padukone announced.

This tournament will feature the country's top players like Sourabh Verma, Sameer Verma, Rohit Yadav and seasoned campaigners like Arvind Bhat, Anup Sridhar and Chetan Anand in the men's singles.

The womens' singles field includes top ranked Arundati Pantwane, former National champions Sayali Gokhale and Aditi Mutatkar, Tanvi Lad and Junior National champion Rituparna Das besides Commonwealth Games Gold medalist in women's doubles Ashwini Ponnappa in singles and mixed doubles, partnering Tarun Kona.

The men's doubles has National champions Pranav Chopra and Akshay Dewalkar as the top seeds with eight times National champions Sanave and Rupesh Kumar and the 2012 National champions Manu Attri and Sumeet Reddy.