LAHORE: The duo of Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan and Rohan Bopanna of India popularly known as ‘Indo-Pak Express’ is through to quarterfinal of the Kremlin Cup ATP World Championship in Moscow.
They were up against a strong pair of L Fridle of Czech Republic, a former top 10 doubles player, and Victor Hanescu of Romania. In the first set Aisam and Rohan totally dominated their opponents and clearly dictated the play as they broke Friedl & Hanesecu’s serve twice on the way of grabbing the set with a score of 6-1.
In the second set, however, the fates were completely reversed as Aisam and Rohan’s serve was broken twice due to which they went down 1-5. Thanks to a few outclass return winners by the duo, they were able to break back, and then comfortably held their own to reduce the deficit.
They played well to take the score to 40-40 from being 0-30 on Hanescu’s serve but were unable to prevent the Romanian from closing the set with a score of 6-3. In the super tiebreak Aisam & Rohan put enormous pressure on Friedl and Hanescu as they took the first three points but their mini-break advantage was later neutralized as they lost their serve.
At 7-8 however they were again able to convert a mini-break point to make it 9-8 and made sure that they win the next point on their own serve to take the super tie break the match at 10-8.
