Karanuday survives scare

Karanuday started strongly and broke Shokeen in the fourth game of the match to lead 3-1. He had a high percentage of first serves and varied the pace of his ground strokes nicely to disrupt his opponent’s rhythm. Shokeen began with a few errors and conceded the early advantage. Later he managed to put pressure on Karanuday’s serve and the 6th game saw as many as five deuce points before a forehand error gave Karanuday the important game. After the tough hold he quickly closed out the set (6-3). An angry outburst from Shokeen,indicating how close he thought the set had been.

Shokeen changed his strategy in the second set and started aggressively. He ran around his backhand to create openings and used his big forehand to maximum advantage racing to a 3-0 lead. He also came to the net behind heavy ground strokes to finish off the points,winning the second set(3-6) with a thumping ace. With the momentum in his hands,Shokeen broke Karanuday to take an early 2-1 lead. However that would be the high point of his match. Karanuday broke back to make it 2 all. At three all Karanuday would save five break points to win the game and decisively the momentum. Vivek’s form and resistance took a dip as he lost the next two games,final score being 6-3,3-6,6-3.

In another match an injured Vitali Reshetnikov from Russia defeated Rohit Bisht in straight sets 6-3 6-3. Despite suffering from a knee ailment that visibly restricted his movement Vitali refused to concede the match. He moved Rohit from corner to corner and used drop shots to end the points quickly. Rohit on the other hand could not take advantage of his opponent’s lack of mobility,he played defensively to hurt his own cause.

Sharan starts with doubles win

After winning the doubles event last week and finishing runners-up in the singles,Divij Sharan continued his good run in the ITF Futures circuit. He has played the last few doubles events without his regular partner Vishnu Vardhan who is out because of an injury,but the change in combination does not seem to be affecting the doubles specialist Divij. The second seed pairing of Divij Sharan and Rohan Gajjar prevailed over Abhijeet Tiwari and Akash Wagh (6-4,6-4) after a spirited challenge from the youngsters.

Yannick Nelord and Ajay Selvaraj had to fight hard for a victory against Fariz Mohammed and Vignesh Veerabadran. Their match was decided in a super tie break (6-3,6-7,10-5). Tejas Chaukulkar and Neerak Elangovan beat Naveen Sai and Sumeet Shinde 6-3,6-1 in a one sided contest.