GAIL ahead in truncated tennis final

Bangalore: GAIL led ONGC 1-0 when bad light curtailed play in the final tie of the 33rd Petroleum Inter-unit Tennis Tournament here Wednesday.

After Saketh Myneni put GAIL in the lead beating V.M. Ranjeet 6-1, 6-4, the second rubber was tied at one set all between Vishnu Vardhan and Ramkumar Ramanathan when bad light stopped proceedings. Ramkumar won the first set on tie-break at 7-6 (0) for GAIL and Vishnu hit back for ONGC taking the second set at 6-4, before play was called off for the day. The match will resume Thursday morning at 9. Myneni provided a solid start for GAIL when he took the opening set quite easily after breaks of serve in the second and fourth games before Ranjeet managed to win his first service game in the sixth, but could not do much more. Ranjeet curbed his erratic stroke play in the second set with a much better display and kept passing Myneni with solid returns. In fact, he had a good chance of breaking his rival in the sixth game and had two break points before Myneni rallied to make it deuce with an ace and went on to hold serve. Myneni then seized a decisive break in the ninth game which saw Ranjeet slump with a double fault and two mishits. Myneni then served out the set for the match that lasted 90 minutes. The contest between Vishnu Vardhan and Ramkumar provided lot of sparks. The young Ramkumar matched the fire power of his Olympian rival in good measure and in the first set. Both hung on to their serve grimly till the tie-break that Ramkumar won quite comfortably. Varshan came back strongly to take the second set, at 6-4 with his booming first serve to tie the match when rain clouds triggered bad light, forcing stoppage. IOCL defeated OIL 2-0 to finish third as Davis Cupper Rohan Bopanna beat CS Mohanty 6-3, 6-4, and Vasudev Reddy overcame Anshuman Dutta who retired after losing the first set 3-6.