Week 40 - Commonwealth Games - New Delhi, India

mjd · Challenger qualifying

RE: Entries Week 40: Commonwealth Games

Count Zero · Tennis legend

mjd wrote:

Count Zero wrote:

But then how does that work for Baltacha? both her parents are Ukrainian right?

right ...... and she lives in Ipswich

yeah, but we shouldnt hold that against her, poor thing smile

The Knight · Challenger qualifying

Boggo is English surely, i thought he was raised from 9 in London?

RBBOT · Futures qualifying

As far as I was aware in order to play sport for a particular country one had to prove a family connection by birth, not just live there. However, the way this country is falling apart I wouldn't be surprised to see Mahmoud Amadhinijad declare that he was English.

It seems to depend on the sport's international and national governing bodies, the latter able to impose more strict rules than the former.

e.g. In football FIFA demand that either a) the player, a parent or grandparent is born in the country or b) the player has been a naturalised citizen for two years. However, the home nations FAs have more strict rules and only accept option a) above. Scotland/Wales are lobbying to change this to also accept players with 5 years full time education in the country. Apparently for a lot of welsh people, the local maternity hospital is in England.

The commonwealth games rules are delightfully ambiguous. They state:

a) You must be a citizen or subject of the country you represent, but don't define how "subject" differs from citizenship.

b) If a parent was born in a different commonwealth country that shares the same passport/citizenship with the country where you were born, you can choose to represent their country instead of yours.

c) once you represent a country you can't represent another one at a later games

So there appear to be no rules on which home nation someone who obtains British Citizenship through immigration can play for, unless they are imposed by the home nation's commonwealth games team. The team England website shows no additional restrictions for athletics, but as I already mentioned, for some reason the tennis criteria are the only sport not published. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is because the LTA are involved somewhere along the line and thus LTA efficiency is applicable.

-- Edited by RBBOT on Wednesday 4th of August 2010 05:45:37 PM

The Knight · Challenger qualifying

mjd wrote:

As far as I was aware in order to play sport for a particular country one had to prove a family connection by birth, not just live there. However, the way this country is falling apart I wouldn't be surprised to see Mahmoud Amadhinijad declare that he was English and Liberty would support his claim then a high court judge would declare that he could not be extradited in case he was assinated in Iran.

-- Edited by mjd on Wednesday 4th of August 2010 04:48:18 PM

hey shouldn't turn him down, he's got a quality first serve. Forget Eaton, think a leftie version of Sampras. Silver Medal's in the bag there

indiana · Tennis legend

The Knight wrote:

mjd wrote:

....then a high court judge would declare that he could not be extradited in case he was assinated in Iran.

I really don't want to know what that involves

steven · Tennis legend

Here's MJD's initial list again with the ones he missed added in (the new ones are the ones with the three-letter country codes) and with the top three from each country in bold assuming that nobody in the top 50 plays and anyone else eligible does - both rather sweeping assumptions, but hopefully a reasonable first guess:

Commonwealth players from the top 300
Rankings based on Aug 2nd

4 - Andy Murray - Scotland
25 - Marco Baghdatis - Cyprus
30 - Lleyton Hewitt - Australia
84 - Kevin Anderson RSA
96 - Somdev Devvarman IND
98 - Peter Luczac - Australia
99 - Dustin Brown - Jamaica
146 - Carsten Ball AUS
179 - Marinko Matosevic AUS
183 - Matt Ebden AUS
189 - Alex Bogdanovic ENG
200 - Peter Polansky - Canada
208 - Rik de Voest RSA
209 - Milos Raonic - Canada
213 - Greg Jones - Australia
220 - Daniel King-Turner NZL
223 - Bernard Tomic - Australia
237 - Nick Lindahl - Australia
249 - Jamie Baker - Scotland
260 - John Millman - Australia
263 - Isak van der Merwe - Rep South Africa
269 - Brydan Klein - Australia
283 - James Ward - England
287 - Richard Bloomfield - England

368 Dancevic CAN (and possibly others) must have a PR in the top 300 too.

N.B. That only gives us 15 of the 26 direct acceptances, so the cut is likely to end up way below this - think a 10K Future with the odd Challenger-level 'ringer' in the draw.

13 more Commonwealth countries have ATP ranked players. Listed below together with their no. 1s, some of whom must be top candidates for the 6 ITF WCs (which are supposed to be used mainly to increase the geographical spread), they are:

UGA - Duncan Mugabe WR 738
WAL - Josh Milton WR 745
MLT - Matthew Asciak WR 898
SRI - Harshana Godamanne WR 1018
PAK - Aisam ul-Haq Qureshi WR 1063 (but probably has a PR in the top 300 too)
BAR - Haydn Lewis WR 1141
NGR - Sunday Emmanuel WR 1214
SOL - Michael Leong WR 1268
BAH - Timothy Neilly WR 1404
TRI - Joseph Cadogan WR 1424
CAM - Celestin Nkoueleue WR 1520
SLE - Sahr Timothy Kpulun WR 1520 (*)
MAS - Adam Jaya WR 1714

(*) brings a new meaning to the old Henman fans' wish, arise Sahr Timothy wink

Also, oddly enough, Hendrik Coertzen WR 1404 is listed by the LTA as playing for the Channel Islands but the ATP have him as a South African.

-- Edited by steven on Wednesday 4th of August 2010 08:44:40 PM

RBBOT · Futures qualifying

Patrick Ogier & Dominic McLuskey, both unranked, have already been confirmed as entered by Guernsey - they may not make the draw of course.

Back when the criteria were announced I tried to work out the women's draw based on the rankings at the time, and it wasn't possible to fill the 26 slots with ranked players even if everyone eligible played.

-- Edited by RBBOT on Wednesday 4th of August 2010 09:38:20 PM

mjd · Challenger qualifying

Thanks Steven, I knew that you couldn't resist the challenge

wolf · Tennis legend

steven wrote:

Also, oddly enough, Hendrik Coertzen WR 1404 is listed by the LTA as playing for the Channel Islands but the ATP have him as a South African.

Interesting. He played a couple of British Tour events this year, losing to Jamie Whiteford in the Tipton BT semis. He also had a brother and coach in tow.

steven wrote:

PAK - Aisam ul-Haq Qureshi WR 1063 (but probably has a PR in the top 300 too)

Why on earth would he? He hasn't been injured.

I wouldn't think PR's count for this anyway.

DavidC · Tennis legend

philwrig wrote:

I wonder whether this will clash with the 75k at Barnstaple.

Barnstaple is the same week, so there's a definite clash. Shrewsbury is 20th - 26th September so there might also be a clash if there is a holding camp with tennis players required to attend more than a week in advance (very unlikely I think)

RBBOT · Futures qualifying

I wouldn't think this clash would affect much of the British contingent. Most of them are either high enough to get into 75k & 50k events on ranking (hence these two events aren't special for getting wildcards into bigger tournaments than usual) or are low enough that others would get the wildcards at these two tournaments ahead of them. And although there are no ranking points, there is full hospitality & flights would be funded so the only cost is opportunity.

The big ATP/WTA China events are the more relevant clashes.

-- Edited by RBBOT on Wednesday 4th of August 2010 11:21:29 PM

indiana · Tennis legend

DavidC wrote:

philwrig wrote:

I wonder whether this will clash with the 75k at Barnstaple.

Barnstaple is the same week, so there's a definite clash. Shrewsbury is 20th - 26th September so there might also be a clash if there is a holding camp with tennis players required to attend more than a week in advance (very unlikely I think)

I would pretty much assume that tennis players won't be required by countries to attend any holding camps in advance, but just pretty much arrive and depart as they wish as per I think is general practice for tennis players at the Olympics.

Countries are going to have enough trouble getting anyone half decent to the Games without asking for that, given the clashes with the normal tennis timetable.

-- Edited by indiana on Wednesday 4th of August 2010 11:49:55 PM

RBBOT · Futures qualifying

Articles in the Guardian and Australian have Andy listed among the stars not participating. Also Somdev Devvarman states he is undecided, so even the Indian's aren't that committed.

indiana · Tennis legend

I guess some folk decided that tennis at the Commonwealth Games would be a good idea

And the gold medal for the Champion Commonwealth player of those who hadn't got something better to do goes to....

-- Edited by indiana on Thursday 5th of August 2010 12:06:04 AM