The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Sunil Kumar in quarterfinals

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 01, 2006

Sport

Sport - Tennis

Sunil Kumar in quarterfinals

Kamesh Srinivasan

DEHRA DUN: Sunil Kumar outwitted Yaoki Ishii of Japan 6-4, 6-7(4), 7-5 to reach the quarterfinals of the ONGC $15,000 ITF Futures tennis tournament at the Shanti Academy courts here on Wednesday. It was an anti-climax to a high quality contest as Ishii doublefaulted on the sixth matchpoint.

Unable to hide his frustration, he smashed his racquet before shaking hands with the victor.

The gutsy Japanese had teased Sunil throughout as he saved five matchpoints in a gripping tenth game of the decider with intense strokeplay that forced the talented Indian to make some errors.

Sunil was cruising in the third set at 4-1 when the Japanese hauled himself back into the game with a break in the seventh game, converting the fourth breakpoint.

What clinched the day for Sunil was his ability to serve out the 11th game at love, which helped him put pressure on Ishii, who could not win more than two points in the last game.

Karan Rastogi, Vivek Shokeen and Vinod Sridhar are the other Indians who advanced. Karan lost the first set and faced a breakpoint in the first game of the second against the crafty Nitin Kirtane, but blasted his way to victory. He will meet Vivek, who humbled Sumit Prakash Gupta.

The results:

Singles (pre-quarterfinals): Henry Adjei-Darko (Gha) bt Vijay Paul (US) 6-2, 6-4; Aqeel Khan bt Vishaal Uppal 6-2, 6-3; Nick Monroe (US) bt Aditya Madkekar 6-4, 6-1; Vinod Sridhar bt Purav Raja 6-2, 6-3; Vivek Shokeen bt Sumit Prakash Gupta 6-4, 6-2; Karan Rastogi bt Nitin Kirtane 4-6, 6-0, 6-0; Sunil Kumar bt Yaoki Ishii (Jpn) 6-4, 6-7(4), 7-5; Alexey Kedriouk (Kaz) bt Mustafa Ghouse 7-5, 6-4. Doubles (quarterfinals): Vinod Sridhar/Vishaal Uppal bt Sandeep Kirtane/Varun Walia 6-3, 6-1; Aditya Madkekar/Purav Raja bt Tushar Liberhan/Navdeep Singh 7-5, 6-1; Punna Vishal/Vishnu Vardhan bt Sumit Prakash Gupta/Vivek Shokeen 2-6, 7-6(5), 6-4; Mustafa Ghouse/Sunil Kumar bt Alon Moses/Vijit Sehgal 6-2, 6-4.

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