Sibling revelry at DLTA

A passionate tennis player as a junior,Pratik is visiting at the RK Khanna Stadium after four years. Incidentally,the junior national he played here in 2008 was also his last competitive tournament — something that was evident with how he couldn’t keep a track of which side to serve from in the doubles match. Though he shifted focus full-time to academics since then,the interest in the sport rubbed off on Manav.

“He is trying to play full-time and he travels for all the tournaments and has started making a mark in ITF juniors as well,winning the titles in doubles at least,” Pratik,20,says. “I was playing tennis just as an evening activity for quite some time. Playing for my state here is a good experience and I am enjoying feeling of competing again,” Pratik adds.

With Pratik pursuing his graduation in Chennai and Manav doing the tournament grind,this is a rare week of staying together that the brothers are looking forward to.

Their 3-0 loss to Delhi notwithstanding,some Playstation and Delhi darshan are on the list for later.

Keeping the faith

While it’s a walk down memory lane for Pratik,Manipur’s Premjit is just trying to absorb everything he sees here. Every time a tournament is hosted in his state,Premjit says he ends up winning the title match but it has been three years he played outside of his state and that perhaps reflects in his 6-2 6-1 loss against Karnataka’s Sagar Manjana.

But he is here for the experience of a traveling tennis player – enjoying cheering on his teammate in the second singles and wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Kham Manipur.’

Among the unseeded teams,only Mizoram managed a stunning victory over Bengal in the first singles and their second singles went to a third set as well but they lost the deciding doubles rubber. Lalmachuana,the winner for Mizoram has been training under Vishal Uppal for some months and it is exactly such a thrill of beating a much higher player that he was aspiring for from this event.

For the few professionals in this event,the one-sided encounters are still a way to get some match practice in. Vijayant Malik who trains at the Siri Fort Complex and is representing Haryana here is using this event to test his strained ankle,an injury that made him miss the recent swing of Men’s Futures in India.

Sriram Balaji from Tamil Nadu which is the top seed at the tournament is a regular at the Futures circuit as well and with their team touted to win here,this is Balaji’s way of warming up before he leaves for training in Germany. The Delhi team of Kunal Anand,Ankit Sachdeva and Karan Salwan are trying to get match practice in the heat in order to be better prepared for the upcoming AITA events.

Results: Delhi beat Tripura 3-0,Tamil Nadu beat Jharkhand 3-0,Maharashtra beat Assam 3-0,Haryana beat Orissa 3-0,Uttar Pradesh beat Andaman Nicobar,Andhra Pradesh beat Madhya Pradesh 2-1,Karnataka beat Manipur 3-0,West Bengal beat Mizoram 2-1