The Hindu : Sport : The rain is a pain at the Chennai Open

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The rain is a pain at the Chennai Open

Kunal Diwan

Friday’s schedule was thrown into disarray

— Photo: S.R. Raghunathan

HOPEFUL: A bout of wet weather did not dampen the young spectators at the Chennai Open and they waited patiently for the quarterfinal action to begin on Friday.

CHENNAI: A rain-swept afternoon more becoming of London than Chennai made one realise the extent to which a sportsperson remained a slave to simple nature.

Composite frames strung with high-tensile polyester mattered little when the arena at the SDAT Stadium here was pattered the livelong day by an irritating drizzle, which neither broke into a full-fledged downpour, nor let up sufficiently to allow play.

The intervention of inclement weather ensured that quarterfinal action at the Chennai Open on Friday could begin only late in the evening thanks to some strong gusts scattering into oblivion the wispy layer of clouds suspended in the upper atmosphere.

A roof still a long way off — and Sir Cliff Richard further away — what the weather did, aside from making sporadic appearances in ersatz newspaper reports, was throw into disarray the schedule and best-made plans of eight quarterfinalists of eight different nationalities.

Serbian Janko Tipsarevic, the fourth seed, was displaced to Court Two for his quarterfinal against 22-year-old Thiemo de Bakker of the Netherlands.

Tipsarevic would be hoping to go one better on his loss in the quarterfinals last year to eventual champion Marin Cilic.

Playing his first Tour quarterfinal, de Bakker’s past achievements include a Junior Wimbledon crown in 2006 and a leap of 154 ranking places to 96 in 2009.

A sheet of water submerged Court Number 1 that was supposed to host Israeli fifth seed Dudi Sela’s last-eight shoot out against Slovak Lukas Lacko.

Emulating Mansdorf

This past season, the 43-ranked Sela became the second man from Israel, after Amos Mansdorf in 1993, to finish a year in the top 50.

82nd-ranked Lacko is in the final stages of completing a transition from the Challenger circuit to the professional one.

Marin Cilic, no. 14 in the world, was scheduled to play Santiago Giraldo, ranked 107. The Croat, making his third appearance here, had a 10-1 prior to the quarterfinals.

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