The Hindu : Sport : Rain plays spoilsport

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Feb 15, 2007
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Sport - Sports : General

Rain plays spoilsport

K. Keerthivasan

GUWAHATI: The men's finals of the tennis team event of the 33rd National Games on Wednesday had to be stopped midway due to persistent showers at the Chachal Complex.

Dushan Deo, the chief referee, had a half-hour discussion with the coaches of the respective teams contesting in the final. He had no other choice — as rain interrupted play twice in 20 minutes — but to schedule the matches for Thursday at 9 a.m.

Delhi takes lead

When the match was called off for the day, Delhi was leading 1-0 after Navdeep Singh had produced an aggressive display to subdue V.M. Ranjeet 6-4, 7-5 in two minutes less than two hours.

The second singles contest between Divij Sharan and Kamala Kannan saw rain making its first appearance. At that time, Divij, the 21-year-old from Delhi was leading 2-1 in the first set, and the match going on serve.

When the officials were getting ready to return to the court 20 minutes later, it drizzled again.

Fine display

Navdeep Singh plays with a good backlift and generates enough power and depth on his groundstrokes. Against Ranjeet he came up with some superb winners from the backcourt and equally fine volleys.

For most part of the first set, Ranjeet was outplayed from the baseline. Though Ranjeet fought back from 0-2 down, he never looked like making an impact. Ranjeet made amends, though partially, in the second set.

To be fair to both, heavy breeze made shot-making quite difficult resulting in quite a few unforced errors.

The results (final): Men: Delhi leads TN 1-0 (Navdeep Singh bt V.M. Ranjeet 6-4, 7-5; Divij Sharan leads Kamala Kannan 2-1).

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