Sport - Tennis

Bopanna retires against Qureshi

NEW DELHI: Rohan Bopanna suffered a bout of ‘diarrhoea’ and had to retire at 3-4 on serve in the first set against his doubles partner Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi in the quarterfinals of the $25,000 Challenger tennis tournament on grass at Nottingham on Friday.

The sixth-seeded Bopanna who had beaten Qureshi in straight sets at Manchester last week hoped to be ready for the doubles semifinals later in the evening.

He pocketed 12 ATP points and 620 Euros for his singles sojourn.

The third-seeded Bopanna and Qureshi had beaten Frenchmen Olivier Charroin and Thomas Oger 6-3, 6-7(5), 10-8 in the doubles quarterfinals. They were set to challenge the top-seeded Lars Burgsmuller of Germany and Harel Levy of Israel in the semifinals.

Mustafa Ghouse, seeded second with Joshua Goodall of Britain, also made the doubles semifinals, beating Brydan Klein of Australia and Purav Raja 7-6(2), 6-4 in the quarterfinals.

Meanwhile, in the $50,000 Challenger at Granby, Prakash Amritraj, who had knocked out the sixth-seeded Nicolas Tourte of France in the first round, lost in the pre-quarterfinals to qualifier Milan Pokrajac of Canada 6-7(6), 5-7. He collected six ATP points and $860.

At the $50,000 Challenger at Lexington, Karan Rastogi and Florin Mergea of Romania went down 1-6, 1-6 to the second-seeded Rose Hutchins of Britain and Phillip Simmonds of the US in the quarterfinals after beating Kami Capkovic and Martin Klizan of Slovakia 6-3, 6-2 in the first round.

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