Thursday, Jan 22, 2004
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Tennis
By Kamesh Srinivasan
NEW DELHI, JAN. 21. Iciri Rai added self-belief to style and substance, in making a telling statement with an authoritative quarterfinal entry in the $10,000 ITF women's tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex here on Wednesday. On a gloomy day, when repeated drizzle played havoc with the programme and the floodlights had to be switched on in the afternoon to allow an hour of play, the tall Bangalore girl, Iciri was quite sharp with her serve and strokes, in taming the eighth-seeded Indonesian lass Diana Julianto 6-3, 6-3 in just over an hour. She has played many good matches, but the second year student of Jain College, Iciri had not played this consistently before. It was indeed a nice way to make her maiden quarterfinals, beating a quality opponent who had tamed Sonal Phadke in the first round. Though she has been training with the knowledgeable C.G.K. Bhupathi for many years, Iciri seems to have fine-tuned her game nicely with a three-week training stint with Bob Brett recently in Italy. Iciri put her big serves to good purpose and stroked with increasing confidence to beat the diminutive Diana, a trainee of Yayuk Basuki, the erstwhile No.19 in the world. Iciri will meet the winner of the match between the third-seeded Megha Vakharia and Thassha Vitayaviroj of Thailand. Though she spanked the ball as well as she could, Megha was down 4-6, 4-4 when rain intervened to put an end to the day's proceedings. The talented left-hander has it in her to still make a match of it on the morrow. In the only other match that finished, Giorgia Mortello of Italy beat Oxana Lyubtsova of Ukraine 6-1, 6-4, in a stroke-filled encounter. National champion Ankita Bhambri conceded her match to the fourth-seeded Montinee Tangphong of Thailand at 3-6, 0-3, as she had aggravated her ankle injury. Ankita had twisted her ankle while running for a retrieve on the baseline and had also hurt her palm when she ran into the fence, during her tough first round match against qualifier Maya Rosa of Indonesia on Tuesday. Ankita was brave in taking the court this day and started well to lead 3-1, but could not get her act right thereafter, as the pain-killers proved insufficient to tackle her problem. In other matches, Shruti Dhawan led 6-2, 4-3 against Sandhya Nagaraj while the one between Sandy Gumulya of Indonesia and Lisa Tognetti of Italy was interestingly poised at one set each and 2-2 in the third when rain brought the curtains down for the day.
The results: Iciri Rai (Ind) bt Diana Julianto (Ina) 6-3, 6-3; Giorgia Mortello (Ita) bt Oxana Lyubtsova (Ukr) 6-1, 6-4; Montinee Tangphong (Tha) bt Ankita Bhambri (Ind) 6-3, 3-0 (retd.).
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