The Hindu : It's double delight for the Indians

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Oct 28, 2003

Sport

Sport - Afro-Asian Games

It's double delight for the Indians

By Abhijit Sen Gupta

Rohan Bopanna (left) congratulates Vishal Uppal, who along with Prakash Amritraj (second from left) and Vijay Kannan (right) clinched the men's tennis team title at the Afro-Asian Games in Hyderabad on Monday. The Indian team captain, S.P. Misra (centre), looks on. — Photo: P.V. Sivakumar

Hyderabad Oct. 27. India bagged the gold in the men's as well as the women's team championships of the tennis competitions of the first Afro-Asian Games at the Lal Bahadur stadium tennis complex here on Monday. In the men's final India beat Nigeria and in the women's final India defeated a fighting Indonesia.

In the men's section, Rohan Bopanna put India on the right track when he got the better of Rotimi Jegede 6-2, 6-2 without much trouble.

The Nigerian packed a lot of power in his forehand shots but his inability to maintain accuracy cost him heavily. Bopanna kept his cool, placed the ball exactly where he wanted, and played some pleasing shots to notch up an easy win.

In the second singles Nigeria's Sunday Maku put up a good fight against Prakash Amritraj. In the first set Prakash took time to find his rhythm which helped Maku's cause.

But credit should be given to the Nigerian who unleashed some booming forehands and powerful serves that proved to be a handful for Prakash.

Prakash and Maku held serves in the first two games. Maku then broke Prakash in the third and held serve in the fourth to take a 3-1 lead. The set progressed to 4-2 in favour of Maku as both players held serves. This was the turning point as the match suddenly tilted in favour of Prakash.

The Indian women's team (from right) Sonal Phadke, Meghana Vakharia, Rushmi Chakravarthy and Sania Mirza with coach Enrico Piperno are all smiles after clinching the gold.

The top ranked Indian player set things right at this juncture and drew level 4-4 when he held serve in the seventh game and broke Maku in the eighth game.

A few line calls went against Maku at this stage after which the Nigerian just seemed to give up.

Prakash won the first set 6-4 and in the second set Maku could hardly do anything right as Prakash got his game going.

He packed too much firepower and accuracy for the Nigerian to counter. Although the latter tried his best, he could not prevent Prakash from chalking up an easy win.

After the match Prakash gave credit to Maku saying that the Nigerian had played better than expected.

In the women's team final Indonesia put up a strong fight against the favoured host. The Indian girls were hard pressed to get the better of their rivals.

Rushmi Chakravarthy made heavy weather of beating the young and highly motivated Septi Mende 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (7-4) in the first singles. After taking the first set Rushmi was leading 4-1 in the second set when she ran into a bad patch.

Septi won five games in a row to take the set. The third set was a ding-dong battle before Rushmi finally managed to chalk up a win in the tie-break. Sania Mirza also faced a stiff challenge from Sandy Gumulya before Sania too won the third set in a tie-breaker.

The results (final):

Men's team championship: India bt Nigeria 3-0 (Rohan Bopanna bt Rotimi Jegede 6-2, 6-2; Prakash Amritraj bt Sunday Maku 6-4, 6-1; Vishal Uppal/Vijay Kannan bt Abdul Babalova/Sunday Maku 6-1, 6-4).

Women's team championship final: India bt Indonesia 2-0 (Rushmi Chakravarthy bt Septi Mende 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (7-4); Sania Mirza b Sandy Gumulya 6-1, 5-7, 7-6 (7-5); both teams agreed not to play the doubles match).

Individual competition (singles): Men: Jhonny Arcilla (Phi) bt Rohan De Silva (Sri) 7-5, 6-4; Women: Gerthe Khady (Sen) bt Masiyazi Fadzai (Zim) 6-2, 6-4.

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