India’s national tennis federation, AITA on Wednesday asked the International Tennis Federation (ITF) to either postpone the Davis Cup tie against Pakistan in Islamabad or shift to a neutral venue due to the ongoing tensions between the two countries.
The All India Tennis Association, taking a more aggressive stance than earlier, has said it would not request a neutral venue as suggested by ITF for Asia Oceania Zone 1 ties scheduled to be held on September 14th to 15th.
AITA expressed its surprise that the governing body is asking India to make the request as ‘this responsibility rests with the ITF.’
“In the current situation there are two options that the ITF wants to consider: (1) Postpone the specific Davis Cup Tie to November/ December by which time hopefully, the situation would have stabilized. (2) Since the current situation does not seem to be conducive, in our opinion subject to our reading the report of your security consultants, ITF Board of Directors suo moto by itself may decide to shift this particular Davis Cup tie to a neutral venue at ITF’s cost”, mail addressed to ITF Executive Director Justine Albert said.
