Coach Ankit Patel sums up the agony of India falling short

‘It is rare for a team to lose from 9-5 in the super tie-break in doubles’

The Indian team had five match points in the doubles to win the quarterfinals against Korea, the eventual champion, and book one of the four berths for the World Group under-14 tennis competition.

As destiny would have it, the Koreans survived the match points to eventually emerge as the No.1 team.

Coach Ankit Patel, the captain of the under-14 boys’ team in the Asia-Oceania World Junior Tennis competition in the capital, was indeed disheartened about the host finishing fifth, but expressed confidence that the boys can gain from the experience and get better.

Bitter pill

“The loss against Korea was most disheartening and very hard to digest. It is rare for a team to lose from 9-5 in the super tie-break in doubles. Both Arnav (Paparkar) and Tanussh (Ghildyal) had served aces and unreturned serves in winning six of the first 14 points. We made the mistake of changing the winning strategy at that stage,” recalled the captain.

“Our plan was to come in for volley, rebound the pace that they were hitting and give them less time to make big back swing. After 9-5, we changed the game plan and tried to hit hard from base line,” Ankit said, about the Indian pair veering off its winning path.

The coach felt that the Indian team was easily among the three best out of 16 assembled countries, along with Japan and Korea.