Leander Paes set a new world record in the Davis Cup as he became the most successful doubles player in the history of the competition, notching up his 43rd win.
Beating the record that he had jointly held with Nicola Pietrangeli heading into the competition, Paes, teaming up with Rohan Bopanna, overcame the Chinese pair of Ze Zhang and Mao Xin Gong 5-7, 7-6, 7-6 in three sets in a match that lasted 2 hours and 25 minutes.
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Needing a win to keep India’s hopes of making the World Group play-offs alive, the Indian players had a shaky start as they lost the first set, in which they were broken twice. Going into the second set, the Indians had as many as four break points, but converted only one of them, while China broke the Indian’s serve once as well. India could not capitalise on their chances, as a tie-breaker ensued.
Paes and Bopanna won the tie-breaker 7-5 to bring parity to the match and to ensure that a third set would be required to decide the match. The Indian pair raced to a 1-3 lead at the Tianjin Tennis Centre, breaking early but Zhang and Gong broke back immediately after to level at 3-all.
Thereafter, the Indian pair comfortably took the tie-breaker 7-3 to seal the match and keep India in the tie, heading into the reverse singles.
Earlier, Yibing Wu had given China the first match after he beat Ramkumar Ramanathan 7-6, 6-4. Sumit Nagal didn’t fare much better, going down 4-6, 1-6 to Zhang.
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