Ankita in singles semis, doubles final

Ankita Raina fought her way past Simona Waltert of Switzerland 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 in the quarterfinals of the $25,000 ITF women’s tennis tournament on Friday.

Ankita broke serve seven times, and capitalised on the nine double faults that the Swiss delivered in the match. Ankita handled the climax well, as she raced through from 3-4 in the decider, dropping four points in all, and breaking serve twice.

In the semifinals, Ankita will play another Swiss, Leonie Kung.

Ankita made the doubles final, as the top seed in partnership with Bibiane Schoofs of the Netherlands. The duo will play the Thai team of Supapitch Kuearum and Mananchaya Sawangkaew in the title clash.

In the Challenger in France, Purav Raja in partnership with Adil Shamasdin of Canada made the doubles semifinals. The Indo-Candian pair will play Ivan Sabanov and Matej Sabanov of Croatia.

The results: €46,600 Challenger, Quimper, France: Doubles: Quarterfinals: Adil Shamasdin (Can) & Purav Raja bt Zdenek Kolar (Cze) & Szymon Walkow (Pol) 6-4, 7-5.

$25,000 ITF women, Nonthaburi: Quarterfinals: Ankita Raina bt Simona Waltert (Sui) 6-4, 4-6, 6-4.

Doubles: Semifinals: Bibiane Schoofs (Ned) & Ankita bt Akgul Amanmuradova (Uzb) & Nicoleta-Catalina Dascalu (Rou) 6-2, 6-4.

$15,000 ITF men, Cairo: Doubles: Semifinals: Alexander Igoshin & Evgenii Tirunev (Rus) bt Yurii Dzhavakian (Ukr) & Gunjan Jadhav 6-1, 6-2.