Gritty Vaibhav through

Fifth seed Vaibhav Kundu avoided an upset as he came from a set down to defeat Tamil Nadu’s Sukanthan Elangeswaran 3-6, 6-2, 6-0 to progress to the pre-quartefinals of the AITA National Series under-16 tournament for the RT Narayan Memorial Trophy here on Tuesday.

Coming into the game as a firm favourite to get the better of his unseeded opponent, Kundu was slow to get off the blocks. Elangeswaran was quick to grab the opportunity and broke Kundu in the fourth game of the set, taking a 3-1 lead.

The TN player then continued to hold serve while piling the pressure on Haryana’s Kundu and forcing him into unforced errors.

There was a mild recovery as the fifth seed began holding his serves with ease but found himself chasing the match after the set, which ended 3-6. Kundu looked a lot sharper in the second set as he went on to break his opponent in the very first game.

Unlike in the first set, Kundu overwhelmed his opponent and quickly wrapped up the second set 6-2.

There was to be no fairytale ending for Elangeswaran as the Haryana player took charge and eased to a 6-0 victory in the third set.

In another match, Karnataka’s Arjun Honnappa beat Manish G and will take on 10th seed Neeraj Yashpaul in the pre-quarters. In the girls’ category, top-seeded Shivani Amineni from Telangana had an easy outing as she breezed past unseeded Viveha Sivaraman 6-2, 6-1 to progress.

Results: Singles: Boys (second round): Dakshineshwar Suresh bt Sandesh Kantimahanti 6-1, 6-2; Srinivasan Kannan bt Amaan Tezabwala 6-4, 6-4; Karan Srivastava bt Ashutosh Tiwari 6-1, 7-5; Arjun Honnappa bt G Manish 6-4, 6-1; Neeraj Yashpaul bt Kamaksh Dave 6-0, 6-2; Tanisq Mallpani bt Nikhil Niranjan 6-4, 4-6, 7-5; Jaishvin Sidana bt Bikramjeet Chawla 6-2, 6-4; Siddarth Thakran bt Raswanth 6-2, 6-0; Abhimanyu V Reddy bt Arka Ganguly  6-2, 6-1; Vaibhav Kundu bt Sukanthan Elangeswaran 6-2, 6-1; Kavan Kumar bt SV Ananth 6-2, 6-3.

Girls (first round): Parvvi Patil bt Aditi Narayan 6-0, 6-2; Muskan Ranjan bt Lakshnaya Vishwanath 6-0, 6-3; Gargi Pawar bt Chandrika Joshi 6-3, 6-3; Aishwaya Patil bt Priya Nayak 7-5, 7-5; Riya Uboveja bt Zeba Amin 7-5, 6-2; Bela Tamhankar bt Sanjana Sirimala 6-0, 6-2; Bhakti Shah bt Smriti Bhasin 6-4, 6-2; Lakshmi Vutukuru bt Chaitali Narde 6-2, 6-3; Reshma Marri bt Pragathi Prasad 3-6, 6-1, 6-3; KS Shimran bt Chandana Potugari 6-2, 6-1.