Womens ITF W25, Nottingham, Great Britain- April 18-23, 2023

[sameerph]

Both Ankita and Rutuja have travelled from Uzbekistan to Nottingham for this W25 tournament this week. Good that after lot of work last week, they have got a Wednesday start.

[R1] (2) Ankita Raina (IND,221) vs. Amarni Banks (GBR,479)

[R1] Rutuja Bhosale (IND,399) vs. (Q) Ingrid Vojcinakova (SVK,1111)

And they are playing doubles together.

[R1] Ankita Raina (IND) / Rutuja Bhosale (IND) vs. Vlada Ekshibarova (ISR) /Ingrid Vojcinakova (SVK)

All are winnable matches but got to see if Ankita/Rutuja are back to full energy after long matches last week. Ankita in fact has lost her only match against Banks last year. So, lets us see.

[sameerph]

Btw, Rutuja continues in Nottingham for 3 weeks of play there. But, next week Ankita goes to higher level W40+H tournament in France which is also on hard courts where she will not be a seed.

Week after that Ankita is listed in W40 in Tbilisi in Georgia where she is slated to be a top 4 seed. Sahaja has also entered qualies there.

So, we might only have this thread for this week and discuss their progress in individual threads from next week unless Humera also makes it to main draw.

We may open a thread for Georgia tournaments later if both Ankita and Sehaja are confirmed to be there.

[Dinesh]

^^^ Deadline for players to withdraw from their multiple tournament entries per week is Tuesday 2P GMT. Plus ITF takes a few hours to update this, so tomorrow will provide a clear picture on where our players are heading for the week of May 2nd. I would be surprised if Sahaja plays anywhere considering she did the same thing last week (entering multiple tourneys and eventually withdrawing from everywhere - notably the W25 Ecuador where the MD is of size 48).

[sameerph]

Well, that Tuesday deadline is over. So, now if Sahaja withdraws that will be after the deadline and there is some penalty for that. Did she withdraw late last week? It is shown as LWMD if that is the case. There are fewer cases of that happening.

Last week ot course Sahaja was with BJKC cup team.

[Dinesh]

These updates from ITF are not reliable until the day is over. My comment wrt Sahaja was for the tournaments concerning the week of 4/24 , where she entered so many and withdrew from all of them (like what is the point of entering otherwise even when you made it to the MD).

[sameerph]

Ankita again lost to Amarni . I had suspected that Ankita would be too tired after long matches last week. I think she should have taken a break this week.

Rutuja won her match.

[R1] (2) Ankita Raina (IND,221) l. Amarni Banks (GBR,479) 46 36

[R1] Rutuja Bhosale (IND,399) d. (Q) Ingrid Vojcinakova (SVK,1111) 61 63

Next,

[R2] Rutuja Bhosale (IND,399) vs. (4) Adithya Karunaratne (HKG,288)

[Dinesh]

[R1] Ankita Raina (IND) / Rutuja Bhosale (IND) 6-1 6-3 Vlada Ekshibarova (ISR) /Ingrid Vojcinakova (SVK)

Routine win in doubles. I expected this loss for Ankita since that Banks girl has an annoying style of game ( from my memory of watching her first win against Ankita). Also, the conditions are seemingly worse to have a tournament here - it’s extremely windy and you can even see the cameras shaking on the live streaming. I remember noticing similar conditions when AniVijay played in M25 events here last year.

[sameerph]

That is why I said it would have been better for Ankita to take a break this week after a strenuous last week. She does not have much point pressure now and has already ensure entry into FO and Wimbledon qualies. So, she can mostly play W40 and higher level events. In a way it is good that she lost in first round, she can be fresh for W40 tournaments in next couple of weeks.

[Dinesh]

[R2] Rutuja Bhosale (IND,399) 6-4 2-6 2-6 (4) Adithya Karunaratne (HKG,288)

Ankita/Rutuja are through to the Doubles SF though.

[sameerph]

They lost in the final.

[F] (2) Ankita Raina (IND) / Rutuja Bhosale (IND) l. (1) Naiktha Bains (GBR) / Mai Lumsden (GBR) 16 46