PUNE, November 16, 2019

James Duckworth and Jay Clarke will meet in the singles final at the sixth edition of the KPIT MSLTA Challenger, a Challenger 80 series event, which is under way at the MSLTA School of tennis courts at the Mhalunge Balewadi Sports Complex.

No. 2 seed Duckworth stopped the run of sixth seeded Indian Ramkumar Ramanathan 7-6(8),6-2 in an one hour 35 minute encounter. The match started strongly the for Indian Davis Cupper, as he broke in the first game but Duckworth broke back in the sixth to level scores 3-3. Both held serves in a close match to force a tie break, Ramanathan had a set point at 6-5 in the tiebreak but 6-5 but missed a low volley. Another missed low volley again saw Ramanathan go down a match point 7-8, but Duckworth served a double fault in pressure to level scores 8-8.

An unforced error on the backhand saw Ramanathan go down another set point at 8-9, a superb forehand cross court saw Duckworth seal the tiebreak and the first set 10-8

In the second set, Ramanathan was broken in the fifth game and went down 2-3, Duckworth held his serve to go up 4-2 ,Ram was broken again to go down 2-5. Duckworth a junior semifinalist at the French Open in 2010, who was ranked as high as 82 in the world before injury held him back, held his serve to win the set and the match

In the other semifinal, 21-year-old Jay Clarke of Great Britain, who turned pro in 2016, reached his second Challenger final of the year, as he took one hour 17 minutes to knock out Spanish Roberto Ortega Olmedo 6-3, 6-2 in a one sided match. The singles finals will be played at 3 pm on Sunday. Entry is free

Results Saturday- Singles 
(5) Jay Clarke (Gbr) bt [7] Roberto Ortega-Olmedo (ESP) 6-3, 6-2
(2) James Duckworth (Aus ) bt [6] Ramkumar . Ramanathan (IND) 7-6(8), 6-2

Doubles 
(3) Arjun Kadhe/Saketh Myneni (Ind) bt (2)Vishnu Vardhan(Ind) /Toshide Matsui (Jpn) 5-7, 7-6(1), 10-4
(1) Purav Raja / Ramkumar Ramanathan (Ind) bt ( 4] Brydan. Klein (GBR) / N Vijay Sundar Prashanth (IND) 6-4,  7-5