Tennis News -
At the 18th World Junior Tennis Finals, TK Prostejov, Czech Republic (Red Clay)

Group B -
India bt Great Britain 2-1

Digvijaysingh Mehta (IND) bt Conor Bunting (GBR) 62 75
Ronit Bisht (IND) bt Liam Broady (GBR) 62 76(4)
Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND)/ Digvijaysingh Mehta (IND) l Jonathan Cornish (GBR)/ Liam Broady (GBR) 16 16

And our U14-Boys created history to become first Indian Junior team to qualify for semi-final of World Junior Tennis Finals ... Another excellent performances by Ronit Bisht and Digvijaysingh Mehta ... Heartily congratulation to Indian Captain Sunil Yajaman for this excellent effort and planning before the match.

Match Report from Indian Captain Sunil Yajaman -
The performance by the two kids reiterates my faith that rankings mean nothing! This British kid Broady is supposed to be ranked high in Tennis Europe Under 14 ranking probably had a learn a lesson or two from Ronit.

As usual, Digvijaysingh gave a tremendous start to India not before having to fight back from being down 2 - 5 in the second set against Conor Bunting. It was poor sportsmanship by the British captain when he called his player out of the court and asked him to take a medical time out (dont know for what) when Digvijay had fought back to make it 5 all and up 30-0 for no injury and called for the trainer. But his move to break Digvijay's rythm wouldn´t bear fruit in the 10 min break that followed as Digvijay kept his focus and just went ahead and finished the match by taking the next 6 points.

Ronit probably played the match of his life to beat Liam Broady in a well contested match especially in the second set. Ronit was down a mini break in the tie break but seemed nothing would stop him. Ronit had answers for every stroke of Broady who generated lot of power. Superb athelticsm, anticipation and ground strokes made the day for Ronit and believe me it was tough match. It just took a little bit of mind games on court to break him.

It is amazing the way these two mischevious (believe me!) kids keep their focus and build on their confidence. All they needed was a bit of motivation which was probably the easiest thing to do for me sitting on court as the captain. These guys cant sit quiet for a minute. After all the warm up I take them inside the players lounge for relaxation and visualisation, after a minute they are behind me playing video games on the machines! I also learnt that probably this is a way of relaxation too and helped them focus. They are small made, look and act like smaller kids but when they are on court, man...these guys just raise themselves up tremendously.

I would be greatly failing in my duty while reporting to you if I don't thank Korean No. 1 player Kim Jae Hwan (left hand player) and their captain Lee (who was kind enough to heed my request) who warmed up Ronit this morning as Ronit was playing Britisher Broady who was a left hander.
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At $50K New Delhi Challenger III, India

[R2] (2) (wc) Prakash Amritraj (IND,222) l Gouichi Motomura (JPN,352) 67(4) 67(3)
[R2] (WC) Sunil Kumar Sipaeya (IND,523) l Toshihide Matsui (JPN,363) 67(7) 46

Doubles -
[QF] SINGH Ashutosh (IND)/ SIPAEYA Sunil Kumar (IND) l CAKL Tomas (CZE)/ KINDLMANN Dieter (GER) 16 75 (4)10
[QF] (4) GAJJAR Rohan (IND)/ RAJA Purav (IND) bt (WC) BHAMBRI Yuki (IND)/ NEDUNCHERHIYAN Jeevan (IND) 64 62

[SF] (4) GAJJAR Rohan (IND)/ RAJA Purav (IND) vs GOODALL Joshua (GBR)/ WARD James (GBR)

Very dusappointing performance by Prkash ... Sunil also didn't take advantage of weak field ... Today I m disappointed with these 2.
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Squash News -
At Junior Men's Squash World Championships 2008, Zurich, Switzerland (Team Event)

Semi-Final -
(5) India l (2) Pakistan 0-3

Vikram Malhotra l Aamir Atlas Khan 0-9 3-9 0-9 (25m)
Aditya Jagtap l Waqar Mehboob 0-9 9-7 8-10 0-9 (43m)
Ravi Dixit l Mohd Shoaib Hassan 1-9 0-9 (16m)

But in semis Pakistan crushed us with very dominating performance ... Only Aditya Jagtap produced decent performance.

Still very creditable performance by our boys to reached Semi-final of Junior World Championship ... Tomorrow they will play for 3rd place (mostly) against England.