Indian wild card loses in PSA Challenger

Chennai: Riding on his noteworthy performance in Denmark World Championship last week, Indian wild card,

Harinder Pal Singh Sandhu lost the match from jaws of victory to highly ranked third seeded Mathieu Castagnet, France, 7-11, 8-11, 11-7, 11-7, 10-12 in the first round main draw event of the PSA Challenger No.4 here today. Indias unseeded Anwesha Reddy put paid to the aspirations of seventh seeded Lucie Fialova of Czech Republic with a hard earned victory at 11-9, 5-11, 11-6, 8-11,11-5 in 40 minutes. While all the other seeds took their appointed places in the last eight of WISPA event, the top eight progressed to the quarterfinals in PSA Challenger. Winning the first two games with Elan, Sandhu started committing lot of unforced errors in giving away negative points in the third and fourth games. In the decider, Sandhu was trailing 1-4 and 5-7 but seemed to have touched his rhythm in leveling the score at 7-all and then the rivals were going neck to neck. In fact Sandhu saved one match point and then messed up his chances by once hitting the tip of the tin and then drove on the tin to give away the match. Gaurav Nandrajog and Naresh Kumar, the qualifiers bowed out of the championship losing to seventh seeded Mazen Gamal of Egypt and Pakistani Shamsul Islam Khan (8th seed), respectively. Bureau Report