Indian sports wrap, January 17: ITF W50: Ankita-Naiktha duo eases past Riya-Vaidehi to reach women’s doubles final
Indian sports wrap, January 17: ITF W50: Ankita-Naiktha duo eases past Riya-Vaidehi to reach women’s doubles final
The Second seed Panna Udvardy overcame a slow start to beat Laura Samson of the Czech Republic 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 in the quarterfinals of the $40,000 ITF women’s tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex on Friday.
It was the second three-set victory for the Hungarian, who does play a solid game once she settles down. In the semifinals, Panna will play fourth seed Yuriko Miyazaki of Britain, who put out sixth seed Dalila Jakupovic for the loss of four games.
The other semifinal will be between top seed Darja Semenistaja, who has dropped only 10 games in all in three rounds, and seventh seed Tatiana Prozorova.
In the doubles semifinals, Ankita Raina combined strongly with Naiktha Bains of Britain to score a 6-2, 6-4 victory over Riya Bhatia and Vaidehi Chaudhari.
Riya and Vaidehi did lead 4-1 in the second set but were unable to drive home the advantage against the crafty opponents.
In the final, Ankita and Naiktha will play the American pair of Jessie Aney and Jessica Failla.
-Kamesh Srinivasan
Maaya Rajeshwaran’s fine run was stopped by Polina Kuharenko with a 6 3, 6-3 defeat in the semifinals of the ITF junior tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex on Friday.
The champion of the last tournament in Delhi, the 15-year-old Maaya had kept the Indian hopes alive by winning three matches. It was physically a hard task and the talented girl from Coimbatore who is accompanied by the coach from the Rafael Nadal Academy in Spain, Miguel Fragoso, had commendably sustained her strong game till she found her match.
In the boys doubles final, Hitesh Chauhan and partner Ilya Maltsev were beaten 10-8 in the super tie-break by Aaron Gabet and Hyeon Seok Seo.
-Kamesh Srinivasan
Oliver Crawford of Great Britain the second seed blanked Yurii of Ukraine 6-0,6-0 with a superlative display of precision and power in 42 minutes to move into the semifinals of the BR Adityan ITF Men’s Future Tennis championship being held at the SDAT Tennis Stadium Chennai.
Eriv Vancshonhiem of Ukraine proved to be too solid for Manish Suresh Kumar, the lone Indian in the quarterfinals. The calm-looking Eric got off to a solid start, while Manish looked to still recover from the long three-hour match he played the previous day.
Egor got the better of the lanky Grigor Lomakin of Kazakhstan, a qualifier in straight sets. Egor was firm in his groundstrokes and served with venom to take the upper hand and gave Grigor no chance to recover. Egor’s quick recovery after every shot and anticipation were of high quality.
The Doubles final is to be an all-Indian affair with youngsters Chirag Duhan and Dev Javia facing Ishaq Iqbal and Aryan Shah. Both teams scored comfortable wins against their respective opponents.
