Despite Ankita Raina’s heroics, India went down 1-2 to China in a Pool A tie of the Fed Cup tennis…
Ankita (Photo Credit-Twitter)
Despite Ankita Raina’s heroics, India went down 1-2 to China in a Pool A tie of the Fed Cup tennis tournament at RK Khanna stadium, New Delhi on Wednesday.
The high ranking visitors started with flourish as their star player Wang Yafan gave them the lead outplaying Karman Kaur Thandi in straight sets.
The 19-year-old Thandi failed to put up much resistance against Yafan and went down 2-6, 2-6 in a little more than an hour.
Advertisement
Though tall and lanky Karman had a powerful serve, but poor accuracy and unforced errors cost her dearly.
The Chinese broke Karman early in the first set to take the lead.In the next set Wang broke Thandi’s serve in the first game. She again broke the Indian in the fifth game to take a commanding 4-1 lead in the second set.
Karman did manage to go close to a break point off Wang’s serve in the next game, but could not make it count.
However Ankita Raina brought India back in the match when she overpowered higher ranked Lin Zhu 6-3,6-2 to draw parity for the hosts.
But Ankita and Prarthana Thombare lost the doubles match to the Chinese pair of Wang and Zhaoxuan Yang 2-6 6-7 (1-7) as India lost the tie.
This was Ankita’s first win against Zhu. She had lost to the Chinese player thrice earlier.
Ankita broke Lin’s first service game in the opening set. She held serve throughout to take the set.
The Indian broke the first two service games in the second set to open up a 3-0 lead. Zhu broke back in the next game to reduce the gap, but Ankita earned yet another break in the very next game to take her lead to 4-1.
The Chinese could not recover from there as Ankita took a comfortable win.
Advertisement
