Narsimhan in under-12 final

PUNE, FEB 25: The bottom line of every tennis youngster should be `one should not be scared of hitting the ball.' Seeing Mehul Kenia toda...

PUNE, FEB 25: The bottom line of every tennis youngster should be `one should not be scared of hitting the ball.’ Seeing Mehul Kenia today, it was amply displayed by the boy from Kolhapur that in a short span of his carrier in this sport, he does possess the quality of a promising player.

The 12-year-old went down fighting to top seed Keshavan Narsimhan of Mumbai. But finally it was the experience of playing throughout the year, which helped Keshavan prevail over every good shots hit by Mehul. After a three marathon sets played over two hours, Mehul at the final stage seemed to have run out of stamina losing a well fought battle 5-7, 7-5, 4-6 to the top seed in the under-12 semi-final encounter of the Hero Honda-MSLTA Masters junior tennis tournament at PYC Gymkhana.

Pune’s Vrushali Gawhankar also scored an upset win, defeating second seed Kalpita Raje of Mumbai 6-2, 6-3 in the under-16 quarter-final.

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RESULTS (Prefix denotes seedings) BOYS U-10 (S/F): 1. Arnav Jain (Mum) bt Tejas Chaukulkar (Pn)6-2, 6-3; Bhushan Sardesai (Sag) bt 4. Hryday Chheda (Mum) 6-3, 6-2.

U-12 (S/F): 1. Keshavan Narsimhan (Mum) bt Mehul Kenia (Kol) 7-5, 5-7, 6-4; 3. Gautam Samarth (Pn) bt Alon Moses (Mum) 6-2, 6-3.

U-14 (S/F): 1.Vikrant Sane (Pn) bt Ankit Doshi (Mum) 6-1, 6-0; 2.Rohan Gajjar (Mum) bt Shashank Kulkarni (Pn) 6-4, 6-0.

GIRLS U-10 (S/F): 2. Roshni Luthra (Mum) bt 3. Nikita Atal (Pn) 6-2, 6-2; 1. Moneeza Siddiqui (Mum) bt 4. Parija Maloo (Khamgaon) 6-4, 6-4.

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U-12 (S/F): Shraddha Lodha (Pn) bt Nidhi Shah (Mum) 6-1, 6-1; Ronak Shah bt Tulshi Metha (Mum) 6-1, 6-1.

U-14 (S/F):2. Isha Lakhani (Mum) bt Krushmi Chedda (Mum) 6-2, 6-2; 1. Megha Vakharia (Mum) bt Sowmya Kowtha (Mum) 6-4, 6-3.

U-16 (Q/F): 1.Noopur Desai (Pn) bt Avanee Gokhale (Pn) 6-2, 6-0; 3. Ashlesa Lokhande (Pn) bt Shagun Thukral (Pn) 6-1, 6-1; Vrushali Gawhankar (Pn) bt 2.Kalpita Raje (Mum) 6-2, 6-3; 4. Avanti Sulakhe (Pn) bt Sonali Sanap (Mum) 6-2, 6-3.

Kirtane enters semis

MADURAI: Sandeep Kirtane struggled to get past JagdishTanwar 6-4, 7-6 (6-3) but managed to enter the last four stage of the Gold Flake Aces Tour tennis championship (first leg).

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Southpaw Jagdish Tanwar almost gave a fright to doubles specialist Kirtane. The boy from Rajasthan began with a flourish to take a 3-2 lead but in the sixth game of the first set he fell heavily on his serving hand and failed to get his rhythm back. He lost the first set 6-4. Despite that he fought on gamely to take the second set into the tie-break where Kirtane prevailed.Coimbatore-based Ramanand had upset fifth seed S Zaman enroute to the quarter finals and he seemed to have the drop on Panja after he rallied from 2-4 to 5-5 all in the first set. But Panja broke him in the eleventh and served out the 12th game (7-5).

Results: Men’s singles (all quarter-finals): Sandeep Kirtane bt Jagdish Tanwar 6-4, 7-6 (6-3), S Panja Bramanand 7-5, 1-6, 6-2, V Kannan bt Sailesh Dhoble 6-4, 6-2, V Sridhar bt Manoj Mahadevan 7-6 (6-1), 6-0.

The RJD’s key face and Leader of the Opposition (LoP) Tejashwi Yadav, party supremo Lalu Yadav’s son, will again contest from his stronghold Raghopur.

Amid Mahagathbandhan crisis, RJD unveils list of 143, drops 36 MLAs, focuses on ‘M-Y’

Political Pulse4 hr ago

The RJD, lead player of the Mahagathbandhan, released its full list of 143 candidates for the November Bihar Assembly elections. Its key face Tejashwi Yadav will contest from Raghopur, and 41 sitting MLAs have been renominated. The party has dropped 36 sitting MLAs and fielded young leaders, signaling a bid to consolidate its core Muslim-Yadav vote base. The Congress has fielded 60 candidates.

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