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Tennis: AP women clinch crown

By A. Joseph Antony

The Andhra Pradesh women's team, (from left): Pooja Reddy, Geeta Manohar, Manisha Malhotra and Sania Mirza, which won the gold in the tennis competitions on Tuesday. — Photo: K. Ramesh Babu

HYDERABAD Dec. 17. Andhra Pradesh clinched the women's team tennis title at the Sports Authority of Andhra Pradesh complex at the Lal Bahadur stadium here on Tuesday. In the final, the host beat Karnataka 2-0.

Sania Mirza led the charge as she crushed Archana Venkataraman 6-4, 6-2. Her victory seemed so facile when compared to the toil Manisha Malhotra had to put in, while subduing Sheetal Gautham 6-1, 6-7 (10-12), 7-5.

Some erratic returns marked Sania's play; excessive power in her strokes sent the ball reeling out of rival territory or wayward on the crosscourt returns. There was, however, little doubt that the Hyderabad lass would emerge winner. In the first set, down 1-5, Archana caught up at 4-5, before Sania broke back to take the set 6-4.

The Asian junior champion shot ahead 4-0 in the next. Archana broke Sania in the fifth, with the latter unable to score a point. Varying her returns well, the Bangalore girl reduced the margin further in the sixth. Sania lost the seventh on serve but came back to wrest her opponent's serve and the match in the eighth 6-2.

Manisha claimed the first set authoritatively 6-1. Some slackening in pace saw Manisha lose grip as Sheetal, leading 4-2 at one stage, took the second via tie-breaker 7-6, decided at 12-10. What could comfortably have been Manisha's win in two sets, spilt over into the third set.

In the men's event, that went into doubles, after Delhi and Tamil Nadu had won a singles match each, Vishal Uppal and Asutosh Singh beat Vijay Kannan and Kamala Kannan 6-4, 6-2.

The results: Team championship finals: Women: AP bt Karnataka 2-0 (Sania Mirza bt Archana Venkataraman 6-4, 6-2, Manisha Malhotra bt Sheetal Gautam 6-1, 6-7 (10-12), 7-5).

Men: Delhi bt Tamil Nadu 2-1 (Shivang Mishra lost to Vinod Sridhar 5-7, 2-6, Vishal Uppal bt Vijay Kannan 6-4, 7-6 (7-5), Vishal Uppal/Asutosh Singh bt Vijay Kannan/Kamala Kannan 6-4,6-2).

Open singles: Men: Anjan Viplav (AP) bt Harshit Sharma (Ben) 6-4, 7-5.

Women: Rushmi Chakravarthy (TN) bt Pragya Yadav (UP) 6-0, 6-0, Sai Jayalakshmi (TN) bt Ragini Vimal (Ben) 6-2, 6-2, Sonal Phadke (Mah) bt Shruti Dhawan (Cha) 6-4, 1-6, 6-4, Radhika Tulpule (Mah) bt Visika Chhatri (Del) 6-0, 6-3, Manisha Malhotra (AP) bt Naina Karsolia (UP) 6-1, 6-0; Sania Mirza (AP) bt Sheetal G (Kar) 6-2, 6-3.

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