India steamroll Pak

Bangkok, Dec 9: Nasir Munir Ahmed, a member of the only Pakistani team that has beaten India in a tennis tie, was hoping that Bangkok wou...

Bangkok, Dec 9: Nasir Munir Ahmed, a member of the only Pakistani team that has beaten India in a tennis tie, was hoping that Bangkok would be the venue to repeat the effort achieved in the 1978 Asian Games.

But Jaideep Mukherjea, whose brother Chiradeep was a member of that losing Indian team in 1978, and his boys won 3-0 to make the semi-finals and ensure India will at least take back a bronze from the team event. In the semis on Friday, India meet Japan, who beat Indonesia.

Prahlad Srinath, who said he enjoyed the experience of being in the Asian Games, opened the campaign for India with a win that avenged his Asia Cup loss to Mohammed Khaliq. After Srinath won 6-3, 6-2 in just over 80 minutes to give India a 1-0 lead, Mahesh Bhupathi made his debut in the Games.

He had one break in each set against 18-year-old Aisam al-Qureshi, for a 6-5, 7-5 win and quickly retired to the medical centre to cool down and put an ice-pack on his shoulder.

In the doubles, Syed Fazaluddin and Nitin Kirtane etched outa 6-4, 6-2 win over Khaliq and Qureshi to shut out Pakistan 3-0.

Against Srinath, Khaliq failed to hold his service even once during the set and managed to hold it only twice in the first set. Srinath was helped by many unforced errors from Khaliq.

Both attacked the other8217;s serve while tending to lose their own or barely managing to hold on. Srinath dropped his serve once and broke Khaliq three times to take the first set 6-3 and in the second, Khaliq failed to hold any of his four service games. Srinath was slightly better off, holding twice. After running up a 5-1 lead, Srinath was 40-love up on his serve for three match points, but he lost five points in a row, most them lodged into the net and once over the baseline, to drop his serve. And then on Khaliq8217;s serve, Srinath got two more match points after the Pakistani muffed his second returns. Off the fifth match point, Khaliq hit into the net to give India a 1-0 lead.

Other results men8217;s quarter-finals:

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Japan bt Indonesia 2-1 SatoshiIwabuchi bt Bonit Wiryawan 6-1, 6-0; Hideki Kaneko bt Sulistyo Wibowo 6-4, 6-0; Takahiro Terachi/Michihisa Onoda lost to Wibowo/Wiryawan 4-6, 4-6.

Women8217;s quarters:

Chinese Taipei bt Thailand 2-1 Wang Shi Ting lost to Tamarine Tanasugarn 7-5, 0-6, 2-6; Janet Whids bt Suvimol Duangchan 6-3, 6-2; Whids/Wang bt Benjamas Sangaram/Tanasugarn 6-3, 7-6; Japan bt Uzbekistan 2-0 Haruka Inoue bt Lilia Biktyakova 5-7, 6-1, 6-2; Yuka Yoshida bt Iroda Tuliganova 6-2, 6-7, 6-4.