No surprise - the LTA struggle to spot talent on their own doorstep - they are not gonna take any notice once someone moves to Australia

We have duplicates running in that this is being commented on in The Times and othere media thread.  I have transferred my reply from there over to here  :

 

Count Zero wrote:

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article on the BBC about a young potential star who is going to represent Oz after feeling let down by the LTA

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/13394586.stm

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Clearly it is to a large extent a pretty one-sided article given there may be many elements we are not being aware of, but on the face of it there seems a large element of inflexibilty and indeed inattention from the LTA, best summed by the couple of parageraphs :

"Naiktha's case has shown us that some talents can fall off the radar," Mcloughlin added. "The LTA should be leaving no stone unturned to engage all foreign-based players and keep in regular contact.

"We need to adopt an umbrella approach - accept that many players will face different scenarios and make sure we are still covering them in one form or another."

The not letting her compete in British National Juniors because Rule blah-blah doesn't allow it if you have competed in another national championships in the prededing 12 months seems indicative.  She held ( indeed still holds ) a British passport and seemingly still wanted to play for GB, but not surprisingly played Australian Nationals as she was based there and allowed to.

And the you will pay for court time and assessment stuff when they are prepared to pay the cost of flying over etc first stopping a visit and then in a later visit apparently not really watching or assessing her much at all, does not look at all good.

Just some observations on some things that don't look good at all, while as I say accepting much of the article is at least one-sided and possibly biased.  For instance quite a mention is made of how she much she was outperforming other Brits in the Bolton and Les Petits As, Tarbes Tennis Europe U-14 tournaments rather than she exited both at the last 16 stage, the former as no 5 seed with a bye at the L64 stage.  Yes, a lot of good comments and achievements mentioned in the article, but comments and achievements in isolation without absolutely clear contexts.

Be very interesting to watch Naiktha's future progress.

-- Edited by indiana on Tuesday 17th of May 2011 06:56:26 PM

Interesting, from youtube Naiktha in 2005 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUKPD15xwdA and 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RobTxBkYO0U&feature=related. Now has quite a strong Aussie accent and may well have in time wanted to compete for Australia anyway. It seems to me that the father would have been keen for her to represent GB. Difficult to be too harsh on the LTA apart from the fact she wasn't allowed to compete in the u12 nationals. If the family had chosen to live permanently in Aus surely Naiktha would eventually have wanted to compete for Aus eventually. JoKo moved here when she was 14 and has decided she wants to represent GB so an eight year old is even more likely to want to represent her adopted country.

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This story from the Beeb beggars belief!   Has the LTA screwed up royally - again?   Seems to me that nobody in the upper echelons has even the foggiest idea of man management!  It's scandalous!

Naiktha proving very popular.

don't see this as anything other than pointless/unjustified LTA bashing from BBC...course I could look like an idiot when she wins 20 grand slam titles

What happened to Richard Bekoe then?

Just spotted that the itf are now listing Naiktha as a british player...may be an error....or we have another top 300 player.