6th of Oct 2010
It
was time for wonders and surprises, blunders and crises in second round
tennis action at the Commonwealth Games on Wednesday. Rushmi
Chakravarthi came back from the dead to wrest a win over third-seeded
Katie O'Brien of England, and Rohan Bopanna abandoned a golden chance to
take his match against second-seeded Peter Luczak into a decider, to
lose 2-6, 6-7(5).
Bopanna came back strongly in the evening to win
his doubles match 6-3, 6-1, with Somdev Devvarman, against Scotsmen
Jamie Murray and Colin Fleming, to enter the quarterfinals, and Sania
Mirza and Rushmi Chakravarthi escaped from 2-5 in the second set to wrap
things up 6-1, 7-6(2) against the Scottish pair of Mhairi Brown and
Jocelyn Rae in women's doubles.
Earlier, in women's singles, the
dawning of Rushmi came in the nick of time, at 1-6, 4-5, when O'Brien
served to complete what appeared a straightforward win.
The Indian
effected a miraculous break to even things out 5-5. Since services had
been swapped earlier in the second set (Rushmi, in fact, had six
unconverted break points in the first) the home favourite knew that
prying open O'Brien's serve was a possibility.
The players hung on
to their hurlers to necessitate a ‘breaker', which Rushmi ran away with
7-2, taking the match into a decider, where her depletion disappeared
into resolve.
She notched up an early lead (4-2), allowed the
Englishwoman to equalise (5-5), and split once again the gates of
O'Brien's resistance to close out the match 1-6, 7-6(2), 7-5. Calling it
one of her best wins, Rushmi said, “I was missing a lot of shots in the
first set. After that I was more consistent.”
A little earlier,
Bopanna began with a blaze of aces — three in his opening game itself —
but descended from sharp-shooting blunderbuss to blunderer in a matter
of minutes. Luczak wrapped up the first set 6-2 on the strength of two
breaks, and made sure all through that his part of the job, the hold of a
serve nowhere near as booming as Bopanna's was carried out with
efficiency.
The Banglorean's groundstrokes whizzed with top-spin,
but his 26 winners (to Luczak's 20) were far outnumbered by unforced
errors — 22 to the Aussie's 5. There were no break-points in the second
set, which hurtled into a tie-breaker. Luczak served ahead, and
surrendered a mini-break right away. Bopanna flung down an ace and a
service winner for 3-0, before stealing another mini-break for 4-1. And
that's when he got in a muddle.
A double-fault and a casual
backhand negated the double advantage, as Luczak won five successive
points to move to 6-4 and double match-point. Bopanna saved one with a
service winner. But the second, on Luczak's serve, was put to rightful
rest by the Aussie.
In other singles action, Somdev Devvarman
entered the quarterfinals with a 6-0, 6-1, thrashing of Sri Lankan
teenager Amresh Jayawickreme, Sania Mirza was almost as harsh (6-0, 6-2)
on the Cook Islands's Brittany Teei, while Poojashree Venkatesha put up
a stiff fight against fifth-seeded Heather Watson of Guernsey, before
losing 6-7(6), 3-6.
