Eqbal ousts Paramveer in opening round of ITF Futures tennis meet

Wild card entrant Ishaque Eqbal of Bengal on Tuesday showed qualifier Paramveer Singh Bajwa the door in the opening round of the ongoing Central Excise ITF Futures tennis meet being held here.

Local lad Eqbal seemed to be confident from the very first point as he managed to break Bajwa twice in the opening set, once in the second and then again in the fifth game to take a huge lead of 5-1.

Thereafter, a series of errors from Eqbal forced him to drop his own serve though he eventually bagged the set by a clean 6-3 at the synthetic courts of the Bengal Tennis Association.

In the second set, both the players dropped serve once and pushed the set to a tie-breaker, where Eqbal got lucky as he won the breaker by 7-3.

Francesco Vilardo of Italy took Indian Davis Cupper Saket Myneni to the wires in the opening round.

Myneni, seeded 7th in the draw somehow managed to outclass Vilardo by a marathon 5-7, 6-1, 7-5.

--IANS

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