The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Karishma ousts Rushmi

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 08, 2004

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Sport - Tennis

Karishma ousts Rushmi

By Amitabha Das Sharma

KOLKATA, DEC. 7. The first day of the singles main draw began with a surprise as top-seeded Indian Rushmi Chakravarthi was shown the door by many ranks junior Karishma Patel in the first round of Tata Steel ITF $10,000 women's circuit meet here at the Bengal Tennis Association's synthetic courts on Tuesday. The upset apart, all the seven seeded players made their way to the next round with most of them having to exert little.

Chakravarthi, who got the top billing after France's Florence Haring pulled out citing personal problems, was clearly not in her element and played a scratchy game to allow the opponent the vital time and space to play her own game.

Right start, but...

The match, lasting 104 minutes, saw the senior pro begin in the right earnest and earn the advantage, first breaking Patel in the sixth game of the first set. But Chakravarthi could not go ahead with the leverage as Patel broke back in the seventh game. The two again traded breaks as Patel broke Chakravarthi in the 11th while the latter made even in the 12th — which was a thriller considering Patel squandered seven set points before losing it. In the tie-breaker Patel won it 7-5.

The second set went with serves till the fifth game before Chakravarthi was broken in the sixth. The experienced top seed neutralised the issue getting the break back in Patel's next service game but drew up arrears again in the 12th and served a double fault at match point to see Patel walk into the next round.

Sanaa stretched

In another match, fifth seeded Sanaa Bhambri had to struggle as unseeded compatriot, Sonal Phadke, stretched her to the decider. The match saw as many as thirteen breaks of serves. In the other encounters, fourth seed Sai-Jayalakshmy Jayaram was thrown a scare by qualifier Samrita Sekar. The two shared six breaks in the first set before experience helped Jayalakshmy win the first set in the tie-break 7-2. In the second set the fourth seed got her rhythm back and hardly faced any difficulty winning it 6-2.

The results (Indians unless specified):

Singles: First round: Karishma Patel bt 1-Rushmi Chakravarthi 7-6 (7-5), 7-5; Katerina Polunina (Ukr) bt Shivika Burman 6-0, 6-3; Parul Goswami bt Ragini Vimal 6-3, 6-2; 8-Isha Lakhani bt Naina Karsolia 6-1, 6-1; 3-Punam Reddy bt Oormila Ram 6-4,6-0; Sheethal Goutham bt Gangothri Sandri 6-3, 6-2; Po-Kuen Lam (Hkg) bt Martina Caciotti (Ita) 2-6, 6-2, 6-2; 6-Wiliwan Choptang (Tha) bt Liza Pereira 6-3, 6-1; 5-Sanaa Bhambri bt Sonal Phadke 6-4, 5-7, 6-1; Krushmi Chheda bt Andrea Lipovska (Aus) 7-6 (7-2), 6-0; Chirshanthi Rajur bt Anupama Rajur 6-3, 6-3; 4-Sai Jayalakshmy bt Samrita Sekar 7-6(7-2), 6-2; 7-Archana Venkatraman bt Madura Ranganathan 6-1, 6-1; Preeti Rao bt Iciri Rai 7-5, 4-6, 6-2; Shruti Dhawan bt Vandana Murali 6-0, 6-2; 2-Ankita Bhambri bt Geeta Manohar 6-2, 6-1.

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