A herculean task ahead of India in Thomas Cup

Sendai, Japan, May 2 (UNI) Beset with injury to their star player Chetan Anand, India face a herculean task as they take on European powerhouse Denmark in their quest for the maiden semi-final entry in the World Badminton Championship for Thomas Cup here tomorrow.

After getting 0-5 thrashing from world champion China in their opening match, India managed to down Germany and New Zealand in their subsequent ties to make it to the quarter finals.

Denmark, cruised in the quarter finals crushing South Africa and Japan by identical 5-0 margin.

India thus will now need some thing extraordinary to put it across Denmark who have in their ranks world no 3 Peter Gade, no 7 Kenneth Jonassen and no 10 Christian Neils.

Denmark have a powerful doubles teams - with top ranked pair of Jons Erikson and Martin Hansen and fourth ranked Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen.

National Champion Anup Sridhar has displayed good form as he beat World no 33 John Moody of New Zealand while Chetan's replacement Nikhil Kanetkar also played well in a tie against the Kiwis.

But the match against Denmark is going to be a totally different 'shuttle' game and it remains to be seen whether 'lady luck' will smile on the Indians in the crucial tie.

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