Manish Stuns Top Seed Vladyslav Orlov At ITF Kalaburagi Open

Sai Karteek Reddy Ganta: Manish Sureshkumar on Wednesday stunned top seed Vladyslav Orlov in the first round of the ITF Kalaburagi Open at the Chandrashekhar Patil Stadium.

The 24-year-old played some amazing shots and took the first set 6-3 and was leading 2-0 before his Ukrainian rival threw in the towel citing a shoulder injury, which seemed more out of frustration than in pain.

In the second set, the Indian broke his opponent’s serve in the very first game and pocketed the second after which Orlov quit the match. “It’s a great start beating the top seed. I knew his game as we have played before. I grew in confidence during the first few games. My aim was to keep the ball in the court and I managed to do it,” said Manish.

Qualifier Rishi Reddy became the second player from Karnataka to enter the last 16 stage where he battled fatigue and won against lucky loser Parth Aggarwal 6-4, 7-5.

Meanwhile, the seeded players sailed into the pre-quarterfinals without breaking much sweat. Fourth seeded, Siddharth Rawat, the highest ranked Indian left in the fray overcame Japanese Taisei Ichikawa 6-3, 6-4 while fifth seed Ramkumar Ramanathan, who is just back from lifting the ITF 25K title in Mumbai, his second in as many months, blanked qualifier Ajay Malik 6-0, 6-0 in just 40 minutes.

Sixth seed Rishab Agarwal faced some resistance from wild card entrant Jagmeet Singh before overcoming 6-4, 3-6, 6-4.

The top seeded pair Purav Raja and Ramkumar Ramanathan were knocked out of the doubles competition by the duo of Sai Karteek Reddy Ganta and Kabir Hans who won in straight sets 7-5, 6-3 to enter the quarterfinals.

This was the fifth time that the 24-year-old Manish and Orlov were meeting, with each having won twice. The lad from Chennai raced to a 4-0 lead courtesy two breaks in the 2nd and 4th.

However the visitor who was once ranked as low as 45 on the ITF rankings, showed signs of recovery by breaking Manish’s serve in the fifth game and held his serve to reduce the margin.

Both the players played some superb tennis shots, especially Manish who, on many occasions foiled his opponent’s attempt to attack the net, which irritated Orlov, who lost his cool and her serve in the eight game and eventually lost the first set 3-6.