BENGALURU, May 21, 2026
In an extraordinary showing of resilience, second seed Alastair Gray overcame injury, fatigue, exhaustion and heat to down India’s Mukund Sasikumar 6-2, 5-7, 7-6(3) in the quarterfinals of the S.M. Krishna Memorial Open on Thursday in Bengaluru. In what was one of the matches of the ATP Challenger tournament, the Great Britain man edged past the world number 536 in a gruelling encounter that lasted 2 hours and 42 minutes.
Gray made a swift start to the contest, taking the first set 6-2 with relative ease. However, Sasikumar struck an early blow in the second and raced to a 5-2 lead. The 536th ranked home favourite ended up complicating things for himself as he got broken while trying to serve the set out, but he managed to recover from that disappointment and struck back immediately to take the second set 7-5 and enforce a decider.
As the third set began, Gray, visibly affected by the heat and a back injury, looked like a shadow of his first-set self. The second seed was moving gingerly and was clinging on to dear life as Sasikumar kept knocking on the door.
It looked inevitable that Gray would get broken in the fourth game of the deciding set but somehow, against all odds, the 27-year-old saved five break points and held serve, after which he took a medical timeout for the back issue.
With Gray’s movement compromised after the medical timeout, Sasikumar coasting to victory seemed like a formality but in a big twist, it was the second seed who got the break at 4-4 to get a chance to close out the match. To his dismay, though, the Great Britain man was unable to serve the match out as the contest ended up going to a final set tiebreaker.
Tensions soared with the match right in the balance, but with a semi-final spot there for the taking, second seed Gray ended up finding a second wind from nowhere as he overcame injury and exhaustion to seal the tiebreak 7-3. Gray’s serve, which had gone missing all through the final set, came clutch just at the right moment as he knocked out Sasikumar to dash the hopes of the local supporters at the S.M. Krishna Memorial Open.
Next level unlocked 🔓
Alastair Gray secures his first career ATP Challenger semifinal with a three-set win over Sasikumar in Bengaluru#ATPChallenger | @the_LTA pic.twitter.com/iMLWQPfGtV
— ATP Challenger (@ATPChallenger) May 21, 2026
In sharp contrast, the two semi-finals on Court 1 combinedly lasted shorter than the Gray-Sasikumar encounter as Ilya Ivashka and third Hamish Stewart ended up booking their spot in the final four. While Stewart beat Serbian teenager Ognjen Milic 6-2, 6-1, Ivashka thrashed Mexico’s Alex Hernandez 6-1, 6-2 to make it to the semis in consecutive weeks here in Bengaluru.
Meanwhile, in the final singles encounter of the day, Russia’s Petr Bar Biryukov beat the unseeded Mitsuki Wei Kang Leong 6-2, 5-7, 6-3 to ensure that three of the top four seeds made it to the semi-finals.
