Come Sunday, and the tennis-loving city of Pune would witness the first six-day NECC ITF 40K Tennis Championships, would be officiated by an all- women members' team.
In a first in tennis in India, a 20-member all-women's team, led by Asia's gold badge referee Sheetal Iyer, would officiate the six-day long tournament.
Sheetal would be officiating in her 100th plus ITF event as the tournament will have all women's chair umpires, chief of officials, lines umpires, players desk, physios working during the week.
"We are thrilled... This has been in our minds since a long but we are happy that we will be able to initiate this coinciding with India's 75th year of Independence celebrations," said Sunder Iyer secretary MSLTA and joint-secretary of AITA.
All-women's team: ITF Supervisor: Sheetal Iyer; Chief of Officials: Leena Nageshkar; Chair Umpires: Antonia Drazic (Croatia), Avanee Gosavi, Riya Chapekar, Lavleen Raizada, Dakshata Patel, Shraddha Dali; Line Umpires: Anwesha Chandra, Supriya Mallaya, Geetika Paul, Niharika Gore, Neha Uikey, Chhaya Verti, Sakshi Chug, Isha Chopra, Apurva Rokade, Kulsoom Khan, Reshma Ganapate and Anuja Maheswari.