The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Harika-Dutta clinch boys' doubles title

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Sep 17, 2005

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Sport - Tennis

Harika-Dutta clinch boys' doubles title

Sports Reporter

CHENNAI: Playing together for the first time, the top-seeded Indian duo of Gursher Harika and Anshuman Dutta defeated the Hong Kong pair of Gilbert Tze Chun Wong and Ryan Cheung 1-6, 6-2, 6-4 in an error-prone boys' doubles final of the PNB-Triangle Tennis Trust ITF junior (under-18) championship at the TTT courts here on Friday.

In the girls' final, Sandri Gangothri and Vandana Murali, the top seed, overcame Gayatri Krishnan and V. Poojashree 6-2, 6-3 in an hour and 15 minutes.

Personally for Harika, the win might have given a load of confidence and self-belief.

Having lost six finals (5 singles and 1 doubles) this year, Harika was keen to break the jinx. And he did it after a lot of struggle, messing up two matchpoints on the way.

Losing the first set tamely, Harika and Dutta broke Wong's serve in the first game of the second set and maintained the momentum to race away to a 5-1 lead; Dutta's adeptness at the net and Harika's serves proving to be the clinchers. In between, Harika took treatment for blisters on his playing (right) palm.

Taking advantage of sloppy play from the opposition, the Indian pair dashed off to a 5-2 lead in the decider. Serving for the match, Dutta had two matchpoints on his serve. Cheung's returns backed by Wong resilience at the net enabled the pair to come close to levelling the scores. With Wong holding his serve, it was left to Harika to make his serve count in the 10th game, and he did it in style. The boys' and girls' pair got 20 ITF points each.

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