Devvarman has it easy; Bopanna misses out.

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.