Poonacha, Humeira win in AITA tennis titles

Kolkata  :  Local girl Yubrani Banerjee failed to impress as she faltered in the women's singles final of the Central Excise Open AITA Men's & Women's National Ranking Tennis Tournament, at the synthetic courts of the Bengal Tennis Association Complex on Saturday.

In the men's singles final, India No. 8 and the top seed of the draw, Niki Poonacha of Andhra Pradesh won the title by defeating Dakshineshwar Suresh 6-3 6-4.

Third seeded Yubrani seemed clueless in the opening set and made a series of errors to hand over the set to Humeira 1-6. The local challenger got her rhythm back and kept a ball extra to frustrate the hard-hitting Humeira as the former won the set by a close 6-4.

In the decider, both players held serves till 5-5, where crowd-favourite Yubrani dropped serve, allowing Humeira to clinch the title and walk away with 40 valuable national ranking points.