The Sports-India Community

Bopanna/Ebden have a pretty easy first couple of rounds against French pairs. They are guaranteed to play a wildcard pair in the second round. Yuki/Saketh get a French wildcard in the first round, but could play the 9th seeds in R2. Here are their early-round draws: 6-Bopanna/Ebden vs. Sadio Doumbia...

Good draw for Ankita. She is drawn to play a Japanese ranked 141 in Q2, and potentially 3rd seeded Arantxa Rus, who she comfortably beat in the Singapore final on 20th Jan 2019 (I was there in the second set, but she won the first set comfortably without the help of my vocal chords ), in the FQR.

I hope someone from the big Indian contingent gets at least to the SF in singles this week in Addis Ababa.

Excellent win over the former world #1 pair -- who were Wimbledon and US Open champions in 2019 (and also semifinalists at that year's FO, and again in 2020 and 2021). Even last year, Cabal/Farah made the SF at both Wimbledon and the US Open. Their rankings are lower because they got no points at Wi...

Yes, I know that, but if he had been ranked around 10th in the world after winning Wimbledon (as he would have been, given that his doubles ranking was 25 in April 2022), he would have played many more top-level doubles events (including Masters) simply because he would have made far more money doin...

Karun Nair replaces KL Rahul in LSG. 3 test against England, 320 runs with a triple ton, 3 test against Aussies 54 runs and then dropped. A career whose fortune was decided by just "3" test failure Well not just 3 test failures, but the failure to score much at all in the other 6 test inn...

What a year Aditi Ashok is having. Definitely her professional breakthrough year -- although she made an Olympics breakthrough 7 years ago, and came within a whisker of a medal at Tokyo two years ago. Congratulations on being ranked in the top-50 in the world!

Dinesh wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 9:21 pm ^^^ FFT just announced their wildcards today and Ankita did make it to the Q list, as a result of at least 4 players ahead of her being moved to MD.

Wonderful news!

Mighty close loss to one-half of the Wimbledon doubles champion pair. Purcell is only playing Challengers because he and Ebden got no ATP points for their Wimbledon title. What a travesty!

Very impressive indeed! May she keep the wins coming, against a qualifier in R2 for starters.

Wonderful to have two Indian quarterfinalists in singles at a tournament in far-away Georgia.

What a stunning win for Sahaja in particular! She is improving by leaps and bounds (quite literally, no baby steps for her; either stagnation or big jumps via wins over much higher-ranked players).

Ankita dropped the second set to the young Belarus player, then stormed through the final set: [R1] Ankita Raina (IND, 224) d. Daria Khomutsianskaya (BLR, 653) 63 57 61 Both Ankita (who is top-seeded with a Georgian partner) and Sahaja won their R1 doubles matches -- 61 63 for the top seeds, and 10-...

Wonderful to see Aditi finally achieve a great result on the LPGA tour, where she has under-performed heavily in the past. I hope she mixes in some European tournaments to keep her ranking up in Europe too after the great start to the year.

[R1] Ankita Raina (IND, 224) vs. Daria Khomutsianskaya (BLR, 653) 63 55

Frankly, we should not be too proud of Challenger title 'records' -- which are really a record of futility in successfully taking the next vital professional step of regularly playing (and hence occasionally winning) full ATP tournaments. Vijay, Ramesh and Sashi rarely played Challengers, because th...