Badminton News
At the Sudirman Cup 2009, Guangzhou, China - 10th to 17th May 2009

Indian Team -

Men - Chetan Anand, Aravind Bhat, Rupesh Kumar, Sanave Thomas, V Diju, K Tarun and Arun Vishnu
Women - Saina Nehwal, Aparna Balan, Sayali Gokhale, Jwala Gutta and Shruti Kurien
Chief coach - Gopi Chand

India having very good chance of first-time advancing to Group 2 in this mixed team championships ... The last time we came close to making it to Group 2 was in 2007 when we lost to France in the play-off final in Scotland ... This time Saina is highest ranked player in our group ... Chetan Anand and Aravind Bhat r also in good form in singles ... Our huge plus is performance of V. Diju and Jwala Gutta in mixed doubles ... In past we were struggling in doubles matches to score point but this top-10 MXD team will give us huge push as in this mixed event each tie will have five matches — men’s and women’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles ... In women's doubles mostly Shruti Kurien will play with Aparna Balan due to differences with Jwala Gutta, they already decided to split after this event.

We r having good draw in Group 3 ... We r pooled with Scotland, Ukraine, Australia, Sweden, US, Czech Republic and Bulgaria ... We will start with playing Australia on Monday.
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Chess News
GM Viswanathan Anand won the sixth Chess Oscar, which is awarded by the Russian chess magazine “64 – Chess Review” on the basis of a poll carried out amongst chess journalists and experts from all over the world ... The Oscar comes in the form of a statuette also called the "Fascinated Wanderer" ... Viswanathan Anand is the only non-Russian to have won the award more than five times (Fischer won it three times, Kasparov eleven times).