New Delhi, Oct 8: Somdev Devvarman and Sania Mirza ensured India will grab at least two silver medals in tennis in the Commonwealth Games, after both of them progressed to their respective singles finals, although in contrasting fashion.
Somdev, ranked 97th, outplayed third seed and world number 165 6-3 6-1, while second seed Sania had to beat some demons of her own before prevailing 1-6 6-4 6-4 against Australia's sixth seed Olivia Rogowska.
Somdev will fight for the gold medal with Australia's fifth seed Greg Jones, who upset his opponent and second seed Peter Luczak 6-7 6-4 6-2 in the other semifinal.
Watched by her husband Shoaib Malik and egged on by a boisterous 2000-strong home crowd, Sania erased an opening set deficit to pull off an amazing win after striving for one hour and 55 minutes at the Centre Court of the R K Khanna Tennis stadium.
There was little to separate the two players since both were erratic with their serves and hardly had control over their strokes as unforced errors outnumbered the winners.
Sania could not held her serve in the entire first set, which was over in favour of Rogowska in just 26 minutes.
Holding serve was key but she dropped her serve again in the fourth game of the second set with a double fault.
However, Sania, ranked 131, shrugged off the poor start to make a spirited comeback by breaking 192nd ranked Rogowska in the fifth and ninth game and to move ahead 5-4. She then served out the set in the next game. PTI
