Despite dominating a major portion of their women\u2019s doubles match against Ukrainian twin sisters Nadiia and Liudmyla Kichenok here on Sunday, Sania Mirza and debutant Ankita Raina were eliminated from the Tokyo Olympics.<\/p>\n
Sania and Raina appeared to be racing away with the match after bageling their opponents, but the Kichenok twins came back from the dead to win 0-6 7-6(0) 10-8 at Ariake Tennis Centre\u2019s court 11.<\/p>\n
In the second set, Sania was serving for the match at 5-3, but nerves got the best of her as she dropped her serve.<\/p>\n
It was no longer the same match after that, with the Ukrainians looking out of sorts and struggling with their serves and returns.<\/p>\n
The Indians became prey for the Ukrainians, who pounced on them.<\/p>\n
Sania and Raina were behind 1-8 in the Super Tiebreak but scored seven straight points to tie the game at 8-8, only to lose the next two points and depart the Games.<\/p>\n
In the second game of the competition, the Indians defeated the Ukrainians to take a 2-0 lead. Following that, the Indians had a string of holds, but their opponents had a string of drops. Mirza and Raina had won the first set in just 21 minutes.<\/p>\n
When Raina\u2019s backhand return went over the baseline in the second game of the second set, the Kichenok sisters finally got on board.<\/p>\n
In the third game, Raina went up 40-15, but he crushed a forehand return on the net, and Mirza fumbled at the net to come to a deuce point. The young Indian maintained his composure to serve out the game with a string of straight points.\u00a0The Ukrainians were in trouble after Nadiia\u2019s two double faults, but they pulled out unscathed thanks to some great net-play, tying the game at 2-2.<\/span><\/p>\n Sania earned a breakpoint in the sixth game with a devastating forehand winner, but Raina\u2019s backhand reply was despatched for a drop volley winner. India had another opportunity, but Raina netted her backhand from the baseline.<\/p>\n The Indians got another chance with Sania\u2019s backhand to serve return winner, and they didn\u2019t waste it this time, going up 4-2. Raina got an easy hold in the following game, and they were only one game away from the second round.<\/p>\n Sania was serving for the match when she was 15-30, but she saved the match with a well-timed lob. However, she made two consecutive blunders, the second of which was a long backhand, to giving the Ukrainians their first break.<\/p>\n The match took a dramatic turn after that, with the Ukrainians taking command.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sania and Raina appeared to be racing away with the match after bageling their opponents, but the Kichenok twins came back from the dead to win 0-6 7-6(0) 10-8 at Ariake Tennis Centre\u2019s court 11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":42830,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1981,1526,2046,389,202,638],"class_list":["post-22644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-olympics","tag-ankita-raina","tag-olympics","tag-sania-mirza","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tokyo-olympics"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}