National level tennis tournament conducted without umpires and ball boys

With as many as 70 applicants signing up for the tournament, that is directly associated with the AITA, the players and their families were left surprised that the national level tournament did not have a single umpire to officiate the matches. The decisions were taken as they are in a friendly match with a player depending on his opponent's call. With the prize as big as playing on the most hallowed courts in the sport, the young players started getting into arguments about the decisions. 

Tara Sidhu, who was accompanying her daughter Amreen Sidhu to the tournament looked visibly upset by the entire fiasco. "A chair umpire should have been there in such kind of a tournament. I am surprised that there was none," she told TOI.

"The participants are just kids...of 10,11, 12 years of age and if they are making decisions and taking calls themselves, it is totally wrong. Then these kids are getting into arguments in the midst of the games; all this is distractive and breaks the rhythm of the players. My child couldn't do anything about it, but as a parent, I felt it was wrong that her match had no chair umpire."

An official explained the situation to TOI stating, "Maybe we will have chair umpires from the semi-finals. It is a junior tournament and we have one supervisor supervising the game."

However, the answer did not satisfy Tara who added, "Even in Amreen's game, there were a number of wrong calls by her opponent. but as a parent, I couldn't do anything about it. There were supervisors but even they were not inside the court."