Indian tennis wrap: Ramkumar Ramanathan continues winning form, Ankita Raina goes down fighting

It was a mixed day for Indian singles players’ on the ATP and WTA circuit on Thursday.

Ramkumar Ramanathan made it to his second straight ATP Challenger quarter-finals. The fourth seed beat 16th seed Kaichi Uchida 6-2, 6-3 to reach quarterfinal at the Nanchang Challenger in China.

However, a day after her first top-100 win, Ankita Raina she went down in a close match in the second round of the WTA $125K event in Anning China. The India No 1 was leading 5-1 but failed to capitalise going down 1-6 6-7(2) 6-7(7) to the lower-ranked world No 209 Kai Lin Zhang.

On the doubles circuit, top seeds Rohan Bopanna and Dominic Inglot progressed to the quarter-finals of the Hungarian Open with a 6-3,7-5 win over John Millman and Thomas Fabbiano.

Read yesterday’s Indian tennis wrap here

At the same clay-court event, Divij Sharan and Marcelo Demoliner went down 6-7(6), 7-5, 7-10 to third seeds Ken Skupski and Neal Skupski in a tough quarter-final match. They had earlier secured a hard-fought 6-3, 4-6, 11-9 win over Robert Lindstedt of Sweden and Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi.

Top seeds Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan and Purav Raja were knocked out in the first round of the Tallahassee Challenger. The all-Indian pair lost 6-7, 4-6 to Marc Polmans and Guilherme Clezar.

At the Nanchang Challenger as well, top seeds James Cerretani and N Sriram Balaji exited after a 4-6, 3-6 loss in the quarter-finals to Alex Bolt and Akira Santillan.

ITF Results

All the Indians in the singles fray with the exception of Arjun Kadhe lost at the $25,000 ITF event in Abuja, Nigeria. Kadhe, seeded second, beat William Bushamuka 6-3 6-3 while Sadio Doumbia beat Kunal Anand 6-4, 6-1, Tom Jomby beat Suraj Prabodh 6-1, 6-3 while Danylo Kalenichenko beats Vijay Sundar Prashanth 6-1, 6-0.

At the $25,000 ITF event in Andijan in Uzbekistan Sidharth Rawat beat Matvey Minin 6-1, 7-6(2). In the women’s event at the same venue, Riya Bhatia, who came through qualifying, scored a good 6-4 6-4 against fifth seed Natalija Kostic.

ATT Results

At the first competition of the Asian Tennis Tour, Theertha Macherla continued his good run at the ATT Asian Ranking Mens Tennis Championships in Mumbai. He beat fifth seed Tejas Chaukulkar 2-6, 6-2, 6-4 in a gruelling encounter.

Pre quarter-final results:
Ishaque Eqbal beat Jatin Dahiya(1) 6-2, 6-1
Theertha Marcherla beat Tejas Chaukulkar (5) 2-6, 6-2, 6-4
Raghav Jaisinghani beat Patlolla Reddy (8) 6-4, 6-1
Paramveer Bajwa (7) beat Sahil Gaware 6-2, 6-4
Gokul Suresh beat Rohin Gajaree 6-1, 6-1
Prithvi Sekhar (6) beat Atharva Sharma 6-1, 6-4
Chandril Sood (4) beat Lakshit Sood 7-6(7), 3-6, 7-5
Lakshya Gupta beat Boopathy Sakthivel 6-3, 4-6, 6-3