Top seed V M Ranjeet crashes out of Tata Steel AITA Men’s National Ranking Tennis tournament after defeat to Abhinansu Borthakur

Borthakur to face statemate Ritabrata Sarkar in finals today

Jamshedpur, May 9: Top seeded V M Ranjeet bites the dust in the hand of Abhinansu Borthakur, at the semi-finals of the Men’s Singles category of the ongoing Tata Steel AITA Men’s National Ranking Tennis Tournament (1 Lac Prize Money) 2024, being held at the JRD Tata Sports Complex.

Ranjeet, ranked at 13 in India failed to impress the audience as he got overpowered by the stronger Borthakur of Bengal, seeded 3 in the draw. In the opening set, both the players kept holding their serves as the set progressed to a tie breaker. Here Borthakur proved to be too good as he wrapped the breaker by a comfortable 7-3. Ranjeet had a poor opening in the second set as he dropped his serve to give Borthakur a 2-0 lead. Unfortunately though, Borthakur failed to hold the lead as he immediately got broken, thereby putting the score at 3-2 in favour of Ranjeet. This set too, reached at 6 games all thereby forcing a tie breaker where Borthakur, the winner of the Beldih Club AITA Men’s 1 lac held in November 2023, won the breaker by 7-4.

In the Men’s Singles finals, Borthakur will face statemate Ritabrata Sarkar, seeded 2 in the draw as the latter took a little above 90 minutes to drub unseeded Sajal Kesarwani by a straight 6-2,6-4.

In the later half of the day, Borthakur, partnering Nagaland’s Vilasier Khate, outclassed the duo of Anshuman Singh (UP) and Bicky Sagolshem (MN) by 6-4, 6-2 to reach the finals of the Men’s Doubles event. In the finals, they will meet Ritabrata Sarkar, who along with Sarthak Suden of Delhi got the better of Aditya Satpathy (OD) and Md Fardeen (WB) by a close 2-6,6-2,10-5

Schedule of matches will start from 08:00 am tomorrow, followed by the Prize Distribution Ceremony at 01:00 pm tentatively.