Kunal and his effort to lift Indian tennis
The Hindu
The national level player wants to see an Indian ranked in the top-50 in the world in the next five years
A national level player, who runs many tennis coaching centres in Mumbai, Kunal Thakur has one vision, to see an Indian player ranked in the top-50 in the world in the next five years.
Apart from guiding young players, Kunal has been building the Tennis Premier League (TPL) along with Mrunal Jain, with the sole aim of enhancing the visibility of tennis and taking it to the next level.
‘’We are working 16 hours a day to host the league in the best possible way this season. We will do it at the Balewadi Stadium in Pune, and we will have national and international players, apart from players in the under-18 and 14 sections. We are trying to have live television coverage apart from live-streaming on YouTube,” said Kunal, during a interaction on Thursday.
The league is scheduled to be staged from December 7 to 11.
From not paying any money to the players in 2018 when it was started as a league for Maharashtra, the TPL has grown, and will offer Rs. 1.2 crore in all this season.
“The top players will get an average of about Rs. 4 lakh each and the juniors will get about Rs. 2 lakh,” he said.
Apart from Leander Paes and Sania Mirza, the league also has Bollywood stars, Sonali Bendre, Rakul Preet Singh and Aditi Rao Hydari.
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