There will be another all-Indian men’s doubles pair on the ATP Tour this season as Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan and Purav Raja have decided to partner for 10 weeks until the French Open. They will join Asian Games champions Rohan Bopanna and Divij Sharan, who joined forces earlier this season.
Both 30-year-old Jeevan and 33-year-old Raja have had intermittent success on the Challenger tour with partners but haven’t been able to play the bigger tournaments. Their aim in coming together is to try and make the cut for the second Grand Slam of the year, according to The Hindu.
As of this week, Jeevan is ranked 76 in the world while Raja fell out of the top 100 and is now ranked 103. Raja used to partner Sharan and the duo had won titles together before splitting in 2017. He then briefly played with veteran Leander Paes as well.
Both started their season losing in the first round at Maharashtra Open in Pune with Jeevan partnering American Nicholas Monroe while Raja paired up with Ramkumar Ramanthan. Raja has played with Fabrício Neis at Challengers since then while Jeevan went to the Australian Open with Monroe and played another challenger with Sem Verbeek.
Their first tournament together was to be the Challenger in Chennai but having made the cut for the ATP 250 event in Sofia, Bulgaria, they have decided to head to Europe.
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