Orangers pip Warriors at the post

The Champions Tennis League’s quirky rules almost gave V Chennai Warriors some hope but Nagpur Orangers’ Feliciano Lopez prevailed over compatriot Fernando Verdasco in nerve-wracking tiebreaker to hand the home side another defeat here on Thursday.

Going into the men’s singles, Warriors trailed the Orangers 20-15, and when Lopez claimed the first game in the men’s singles on his serve, it seemed like it was over for Warriors.

That was until the league’s rule that requires that the winning side to clinch the last game kicked in and threatened to derail the Orangers’ performance in the first four encounters.

Verdasco broke Lopez to go ahead 3-2 and held his following two service games to go 5-3 when the ‘super overtime’ rule kicked in.

With a tiny opening to still win the match, Verdasco unleashed his powerful forehands for some clinical winners and raced to a 7-3 lead.

In 11th game, Lopez was ahead 40-15, when he produced three uncharacteristic errors — first a simple overhead smash to the net, then an attempted drop that hit the net cord and failed to go over, followed by a double-fault to go down 3-8, levelling the match at 23-23, forcing a tiebreak.In the tiebreak, Verdasco led 3-0 before two forehand errors followed by a double-fault levelled it at 3-3.

The two shared the following two points before Verdasco’s return failed to clear the net on the final point to hand the home side a gut-wrenching loss.

Earlier, like on Wednesday, Rainer Schuttler failed once again in the tiebreak, this time against Alex Corretja, losing the legend’s fixture 5-4 while Jelena Jankovic prevailed over Heather Watson also in a tie-break.

Lopez was clinical in his performances, in both the mixed doubles with Jankovic and in the men’s doubles with Divij Sharan, to give the Orangers a 5-3 and 5-4 victory respectively.

Divij shines

Divij was very impressive at the net and backed up with some solid service games and looked way better than his counterpart across the net Vishnu Vardhan.

The results:

Nagpur Orangers bt V Chennai Warriors 24-23: [Legends: Rainer Schuttler lost to Alex Corretja 5-4;Women’s: Heather Watson lost to Jelena Jankovic 5-4; Mixed doubles: Watson & Verdasco lost to Jankovic & Feliciano Lopez 5-3; Verdasco & Vishnu Vardhan lost to Lopez & Divij Sharan 5-4; Fernando Verdasco bt Feliciano Lopez 8-4].