Hyderabad, Oct 31: Vijay Kannan played a flawless game to thrash an off colour Jhonny Arcilla of Phillipines 6-1 6-1 in the men's singles final to assure India of a clean sweep of all the seven golds in the tennis competition in the inaugural Afro-Asian Games here today. The second seed proved far superior to Arcilla, who offered no resistance, and dominated the one-sided match throughout, making hardly any errors as he blew away the Filipino in quick time as India won the sixth gold.

As Mahesh Bhupathi with Sania Mirza and Vihsal Uppal with Rushmi Chakravarthy will feature in the all-Indian mixed doubles, the hosts will live up to the pre-tournament expectation of bagging all the seven golds. For 23-year-old Kannan, the former hard court national champion, this will be the second gold as he was part of the men's team which won the yellow metal.

Kannan, who was under pressure to keep up the country's gold hunt after star player Prakash Amritraj pulled out of the event, rose to the occasion and entertained the good crowd with an authoritative serve and volley game besides a couple of aces.


Bureau Report