Rain plays spoilsport

Chennai, August 18: The rain poured for two minutes. It was suffice to throw the schedule out of gear in the IOB-MCC National Junior hard ...

Chennai, August 18: The rain poured for two minutes. It was suffice to throw the schedule out of gear in the IOB-MCC National Junior hard court tennis championship.

At the MCC courts on Friday, the semifinals of the boys and girls singles were in the first set when the heavens opened up. The matches will resume on Saturday morning with the finals slated in the afternoon.

In the morning, things rolled well for Geeta Manohar in the unfinished quarterfinal match against C Nandita. At 5-5 in the decider, it was very much even. In the tie-breaker, Geeta held the whip to win 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (2).

Story continues below this ad

Continuing her good work, Geeta was up 3-1 against the top seed Radhika Tulpule. Elsewhere, Sonal Phadke too warmed up to lead 3-1 over Lisa Pereira.

Kamala Kannan with an early break led 2-0, pitted against Arun Prakash. So was Ravikrishna running into the lucky loser Siddarth Sudhakar.

In the boys doubles quarterfinals, top seeded pair of Mohanty-Karan Doctor prevailed over Rohan Kranti-Gayryl Fernandez 7-5, 7-5. Arun Prakash and Chatinder Singh downed Vikram Aditya and Saurab Kohli 7-6 (5), 7-5.

The doubles girls final will be an all Maharasthra affair. Sonal Phadke-Isha Lakhani put out Samrita Sekar-Preeti Rao 6-4, 6-2 while Radhika Tulpule-Liza Pereira had the measure of Nandita-Yamini 6-3, 6-0.

For Kolkata, the IMD has forecast mostly cloudy skies with light to moderate rain or thundershowers on most days through Panchami.

Unprecedented rain submerges Kolkata amidst Durga Puja preparations; train services hit

Cities15 min ago

At least two people were killed as Kolkata woke up to an inundated city on Tuesday morning after heavy overnight rainfall flooded streets, railway tracks, and Metro tracks. The downpour, which began late Monday night and continued past midnight, led to severe waterlogging across major arterial roads and residential areas, paralysing normal life.

View all shorts

Live Blog