New Delhi, Feb 20:
Playing with a lot of ‘self belief’, India number one, Ankita Raina knocked out fifth seed Noppawan Lertcheewakaran in the women’s event while men’s top seed Aleksandr Nedovyesov fought off two match points against Yuichi Sugita to progress to the quarter-finals of the Delhi Open, here today.
Playing at the surface of her liking, Ankita came up with an aggressive game as she shocked the 229th-ranked Thai and former junior world number one 6-3 6-1 in one hour and 12 minutes to reach the quarters of the USD 25,000 ITF tournament at R K Khanna Tennis stadium.
Nedovyesov rallied to edge past Sugita 4-6 6-3 7-6(3) in two hours 10 minutes in the second round of the USD 100,000 men’s ATP Challenger event. Sugita messed up a 4-1 lead and two match points in the ninth game of the third set to be outplayed in the deciding tie-breaker of the final set.
Ankita had struggled to adjust to slow and bouncy centre court in her opening match but today she came out all guns blazing as she served well, returned well, her ground strokes had power and most importantly, she kept fighting hard.
This was despite being broken in the very first game of the match. Noppawan sent down some powerful returns but Ankita handled everything well with her new-found confidence.
Her court coverage was good and some of her backhand winners were stunning, especially the one on the second point of the eighth game in the first set.
Ankita levelled the score by breaking Noppawan in the sixth game. Somewhat startled by the turnaround, Noppawan started to make errors. By netting a forehand, the Thai girl handed Ankita a breakpoint and she followed it up with a backhand error to give the Indian a 5-3 lead.
Serving for the set, she was down 0-30 but Ankita did not wilt under pressure and took four straight points to close the set in her favour in 33 minutes. (PTI)
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