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Tennis
Chin-Wei Chan upsets Sania Mirza
By Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI, DEC. 5. Title aspirant Sania Mirza played below potential and crashed to a 3-6, 3-6 defeat at the hands of the unfancied Chin-Wei Chan of Chinese Taipei in the girls' pre-quarterfinals of the Asian junior tennis championship at the DLTA Complex here on Wednesday.
The 28th ranked Sania played well only in patches and lacked the right strategy to tackle the forceful and crafty play of the 234th ranked Taipei girl.
While the 14-year-old Sania went for broke most of the time, despite the errors, especially on her backhand, the 16-year-old Taipei girl, more a doubles specialist with a ranking of 19, played a steady game before winding up the key points with a flourish.
Sania got broken twice at the beginning, rather tamely, and could not recover the momentum thereafter. She saved three setpoints before committing a doublefault in dropping the first set in the ninth game.
It was a similar story in the second set, as Sania slipped to 1-4. She put up a semblance of a fight by winning the next two games, but banged a sitter of an overhead into the net on breakpoint in getting broken in the eighth game.
Chan served out the match without any fuss to set up a quarterfinal clash with the sixth-seeded Diana Julianto of Indonesia.
The Indian hopes in the girls' section were kept alive by Samrita Sekar, Isha Lakhani, Megha Vakharia and Sanaa Bhambri.
Samrita did well to beat the more accomplished Taipei girl, the third-seeded Chia-Jung Chuang in straight sets, to set up a quarterfinal clash against Sanaa Bhambri who ousted Eun-Hee Sung of Korea for the loss of two games.
Isha Lakhani fought it out against the seventh-seeded Ting-Wen Wang of Chinese Taipei in three sets, after a rousing start when she blanked the opponent in the first set.
In the boys' section, matches went on expected lines, with the six remaining seeded players pulling through. The top- seeded Sunil Kumar warded off the challenge from Divij Sharan and the second-seeded Amanjot Singh was tested better before he prevailed over Rishi Behl.
The results: Boys: Singles (pre-quarterfinals): Sunil Kumar bt Divij Sharan 6-3, 6-2; Nishank Mishra bt Saurabh Kohli 7-5, 6-2; Wang-Cheng Hsieh (Tpe) bt Woo-Ram Kim (Kor) 7-5, 6-2; Sratha Saenguwann (Tha) bt Adam Jaya (Mas) 6-3, 6-1; Anuwat Dalodom (Tha) bt Seung-Jee Lee (Kor) 6-4, 6-3; Yu-Da Sheih (Tpe) bt Tushar Liberhan 6-2, 6-4; Tai Wei Liu (Tpe) bt Somdev Dev Varman 6-4, 6-0; Amanjot Singh bt Rishi Behl 6-3, 7-5.
Doubles (pre-quarterfinals): Adam Jaya/Dannio Yahya (Mas) bt Anuwat Dalodom/Natapong Pongkunsub (Tha) 5-7, 7-5, 7-5; Vikram Aditya Menon/Arun Prakash bt Nihal Advani/Nipun Gupta 6-2, 3-6, 6-3; Sratha Saengsuwarn (Tha)/Yu-Da Shieh (Tpe) bt Rishi Behl/Saurabh Singh 7-6 (7-4), 6-2; Rohan Gajjar/Amanjot Singh bt Abhay Prakash/Divij Sharan 6-1, 6-1.
Girls: singles (pre-quarterfinals): Chin-Wei Chan (Tpe) bt Sania Mirza 6-3, 6-3; Diana Julianto (Ina) bt Sun-A Hong (Kor) 6-4, 6-1; Pichaya Laosirichon (Tha) bt Ji-Young Kim (Kor) 6-4, 6-0; Isha Lakhani bt Ting-Wen Wang (Tpe) 6-0, 5-7, 6-3; Sanaa Bhambri bt Eun-Hee Sung (Kor) 6- 1, 6-1; Samrita Sekar bt Chia-Jung Chuang (Tpe) 6-3 7-5; Megha Vakharia bt Tze-Ling Kuo (Tpe) 6-3, 6-2; Da-Jung Hong (Kor) bt Lata Assudani 6-4, 6-1.
Doubles (quarterfinals): Chin-Wei Chan/Chia-Jung Chuang (Tpe) bt Da-Jung Hong/Ji-Young Kim (Kor) 6- 1, 7-5; Sanaa Bhambri/Sania Mirza bt Lata Assudani/Medini Sharma 7-6 (7-4), 6-1; Isha Lakhani/Megha Vakharia bt Sharanya Pattabi/Nivedita Venkatesh 1-0 (conceded); Dianna Julianto (Ina)/Pichaya Laosirichon (Tha) bt Priyanka Parekh/Ragini Vimal 6-0 (conceded).
Chin-Wei Chan of Chinese Taipei in action against Sania Mirza whom she upset in the Asian junior championship in New Delhi on Wednesday. (Right) India's Isha Lakhani exults after her victory over Ting-Wen Wang also of Taipei.
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