Ayaan, Vivek enter last four in ISC tennis tourney

MUSCAT: Ayaan Malhotra and Vivek Kolluru were the first to enter the semifinals of the boys under-14 singles at the Arabia Falcon Insurancesponsored Annual Tennis Tournament organised by the Indian Social Club.

While top seed Ayaan had an easy outing in the quarterfinal defeating Arjun Sriram 8-0, fourth seed Vivek Kolluru faced anxious moments before overcoming Surya Mariappan 8-4. In a well contested quarterfinal match, Surya gave a good account of himself and both players played positive attacking strokes. Left-hander Vivek scored the first break but was broken straight back. Surya broke Vivek again in the sixth and tenth game but the fourth seed was too consistent and scored many brilliant winner to earn his place in the last four.

Veteran SK Viswanathan gave teenager Shlok Ail a run for his money with a strong showing in the first round of the men’s singles event. Viswanathan broke Shlok in the second game and played with confidence and broke him again to level at four games all. Shlok broke again in the ninth game and played with more purpose to win the next three games to progress to the second round. In other men’s first round matches, Percy Pereira downed S Ganesan 8-0 and Hemchandra Ail defeated M Srinivasan 8-1.

Earlier, Praneet Raj, Rohan Sebastian, Arya Despande and Shantanu Sriram all scored easy wins.

Results: Boys U-12 (quarterfinals): Praneet Raj bt Vinay Rajendran 6-0, Rohan Sebastian bt Abhinith Woona 6-0, Arya Deshpande bt Advait Kappil 6-1, Shantanu Sriram bt Mikhail Sarit 6-1; Boys U-14 (first round): Arjun Sriram bt Om Aditya 8-1, Surya Mariappan bt Rohan Sebastian 8-2, Vivek Kolluru bt Vijay Rajendran 8-0, Prithvi Raj bt Rahul Varvani 8-2, Achyut Kappil bt Mukul Ramesh 8-0, Praneet Raj bt SN Nandhakrishna 8-0, Sanskar Dubey bt Arya Deshpande 8-2; Boys U-10: Shantanu Sriram bt G Mukesh 6-1, Mikhail Sarit bt Abhinav R 6-2, Mahi Rohit bt Advait Kappil 6-1, Arjun Suresh bt V Dhayashankar 6-1