# AITA and SAI clash over five tennis players cut from Asian Games squad 2026-08-26T04:02:30+00:00 | Sports | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 1 independent outlet AITA and the Sports Authority of India traded claims on Tuesday over five tennis players excluded from the Asian Games squad. An SAI source said Manas Dhamne, Vaishnavi Adkar, Sahaja Yamalapalli, Vaidehee Chaudhari and Prarthana Thombare were never part of the list submitted by AITA to the IOA, and their omission was justified under the ministry’s medal-potential criteria. AITA denied this, releasing a July 3 letter addressed to IOA CEO Raghuram Iyer that specifically named the five players and sought their inclusion. AITA secretary general Sunder Iyer insisted the federation had made an "unequivocal representation" for the strongest possible contingent across tennis's five medal events. The government has refused to relax the criteria, warning that discretionary clearances would invite litigation from other sports bodies. Tennis great Rohan Bopanna criticised the decision, saying a committee had judged players on paper before a ball was struck. ## Indian Opinion Analysis The dispute turns on the Sports Ministry’s September 2025 multi-sport selection criteria, which allows it to reject federation recommendations and cut squads to only medal-potential athletes. Indian tennis has consistently produced top-50 doubles players and Grand Slam finalists, yet singles rankings rarely crack the top 100, making the Asia-wide top-8 filter a high bar. The real test is whether the IOA or a future review mechanism can accommodate tennis’s event-specific demands, where a doubles specialist or mixed-doubles pair can win a medal without being ranked among the top eight singles players. The July 3 letter that AITA cites will likely be the central document if the matter reaches the Sports Ministry’s grievance committee. The Olympic Council of Asia’s final entry deadline for the Aichi-Nagoya Games is normally around mid-March 2026, leaving a narrow window for any reinstatement. ## Coverage - hindustantimes.com Led with the AITA-SAI denial confrontation and included the July 3 letter as documentary evidence for AITA's version, giving both sides equal weight and ending with AITAu2019s detailed rationale for a 12-member squad This brief was synthesised by AI from the source linked above. Tags: 2026 Asian Games, All India Tennis Association, Indian Olympic Association, Rohan Bopanna, Sports Authority of India, Sunder Iyer Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/aita-and-sai-clash-over-five-tennis-players-cut-from-asian-games-squad/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/aita-and-sai-clash-over-five-tennis-players-cut-from-asian-games-squad/#story-in-brief Review state: restored archive article, accurate at time of publication, not offered to search indexes. How this brief was made: an AI model read the report linked above and wrote this summary and analysis, which were published automatically. Published briefs are sampled every hour by an automated quality check; the editor verifies its findings and approves corrections, and corrected briefs carry a dated correction line. We do no original reporting. Methodology: https://indianopinion.org/ai-use-policy/