Yubrani survives scare to scrape past Sahwney

Kolkata  :  Local girl Yubrani Banerjee survived a scare to eventually scrape past unseeded Kaavya Sahwney 2-6, 6-3, 6-3 in the opening round of the women's singles event at Central Excise Open AITA Men's & Women's national ranking tennis meet on Tuesday.

Third seed Banerjee seemed too erratic at the start as she dropped her serve twice to hand over the opening set to Sahwney of Uttar Pradesh at the synthetic courts of the Bengal Tennis Association Complex here.

From there, Banerjee made a comeback by winning the next set by a comfortable 6-3 margin.

In the decider, Bengal's only seed in the women's singles draw looked flawless to take a massive lead of 5-1 but faltered to drop two consecutive games before closing the match by a long 2-6,6-3,6-3.

Ishaque Eqbal, also from Bengal and seeded 4 in the men's singles draw, did not have to sweat much as he surpassed Andhra Pradesh's Sivadeep Kosaraju by a straight 6-4,6-2 in the first round.