NEW DELHI: In what looks to be bad news for India, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) has cancelled the tele-conference with the All India Tennis Association and the concerned security agency in Pakistan regarding the Davis Cup Asia/ Oceania Group 1 away tie, which is scheduled to be held on September 14-15 at the Pakistan Sports Complex in Islamabad.
The telephonic interaction between the parties was earlier scheduled for Monday evening, Indian time, and then pushed to Tuesday.
Bhupathi told PTI that the “call is cancelled till further notice”.
After rejecting India’s security concerns twice, the ITF had agreed to a tele-conference on the issue with AITA representatives.
The secretary general of the AITA, Hironmoy Chatterjee had reached the AITA headquarters in Delhi from his base in Kolkata for the conference. The non-playing Indian Davis Cup team captain Mahesh Bhupathi was also scheduled to join the tele-conference, to address the concerns of the players.
While ITF had insisted that security arrangements were satisfactory for the tie scheduled on September 14 and 15 in Islamabad, the AITA had listed a number of reasons including the worsening political situation between the two countries as good enough reasons for ITF to shift the venue or postpone the tie, on its own, rather than wait for India to make such requests.
