Hangzhou: In a huge upset, gold medal favorites and top seeds Rohan Bopanna and Yuki Bhambri were eliminated from the Asian Games after being stunned by lower-seeded Sergey Fomin and Khumoyun Sultanov of Uzbekistan here on Monday .
Bhambri struggled with his serve and shots in the latter part of the match while the Uzbek players upped their game against their superior opponents to come away with a 2-6 6-3 10-6 victory in the second round.
The defeat will further irritate the Indian pair as Bopanna is among the top 10 doubles players and Bhambri is also ranked among the top 100. The Uzbeks are not even in the top 300.
Serving at 3-4, 30 in the second set, Bhambri double-faulted to lose a break point. A large backhand from Bhambri’s racket gave the Uzbeks the crucial break.
Sultanov made no mistakes while serving the entire set, consistently performing his first serves.
In the super tiebreaker, the Uzbeks took a 3-0 lead and soon the Indians lost 5-1. The Uzbeks managed a superb service return winner to make the score 6-1 on Bopanna’s serve.
Fomin won four match points with a backhand winner. The Indians saved the first, but Sultanov found an inside-out forehand winner on the second to close the match in their favor.
Bopanna had ended his Davis Cup career last week playing against Morocco in Lucknow. At 43, he is also playing his last Asian Games. He won gold in the 2018 edition with Divij Sharan.
Bopanna and Bhambri will now take part in the mixed doubles. Bhambri and Ankita Raina are seeded while Bopanna and Rutuja Bhosale are second.
Later, Bopanna teamed up with Bhosale for a 6-4 6-2 win over Uzbeks Akgul Amamuradova and Maksim Shim to advance to the mixed doubles pre-quarterfinals.
Bhosale also booked a place in the second round of the women’s doubles with partner Karman Kaur Thandi. They beat Kazakhs Zhanel Rustemova and Aruzhan Sagandykova in one minute and 33 minutes. The other Indian men’s doubles pair of Ramkumar Ramanathan and Saketh Myneni progressed to the quarter-finals after beating the Indonesian pair of Ignatius Anthony Susanto and David Agung Susanto 6-3 6-2 in 68 minutes.
Singles top-ranked Ankita Raina got off to a good start while Bhosale struggled to get past lower-ranked Aruzhan Sagandikova to advance to the women’s singles pre-quarterfinals.
Raina did not lose a single game in her second round match and needed just 51 minutes to dispatch 17-year-old Sabrina Olimjonova of Uzbekistan 6-0 6-0.
Ranked 198th in singles and a bronze medal winner in the 2018 edition, third seed Raina will now face Adithya P Karunaratne of Hong Kong for a place in the knockout stages.
Sagandikova is ranked 746th, but it was far from an easy match for Bhosale, who needed two hours and one minute to beat her rival from Kazakhstan 7-6 (2) 6-2.
The first set lasted one hour and 16 minutes and Bhosale, ranked 336th, had to work hard to achieve victory.
The 13th-seeded Indian’s next opponent is fourth-seeded southpaw Alex Eala of the Philippines.
In men’s singles, Ramkumar Ramanathan did not have to move a tendon to advance to the next round. His Tajik rival Sunatullo Isroilov did not appear in the contest, thus giving the Indian a victory.
