Ankita-Rutuja pair wins $25K title

Ankita Raina and Rutuja Bhosale clinched the doubles title in the $25,000 ITF women's tennis event in Bendigo, Australia, on Sunday. The Indian combine defeated local girl Alexandra Bozovic and Weronika Falkowska of Poland 4-6, 6-3, 10-4 in the final to lift the trophy. The pair from Pune had reached the semifinals at the same venue last week, and will be playing there again the coming week.

"(Playing with) another Indian is always nice … most of all fun as we spend a lot of time together on court and off," Rutuja, who trains under Kedar Shah, said. "The first two tournaments we played together felt a bit rusty since we hadn’t played with each other. But it was getting better with every match and our communication while playing also got a lot better." Ankita said the duo still had to overcome a rusty start.

"We played them (Bozovic and Falkowska) for the first time, so didn’t know much about their games, but had seen some points from previous matches so had some idea," the Hemant Bendrey's student said. "We made some unforced errors and didn’t start with our gameplan, and that cost us the (first) set even though it was a close one. "Second set, it was going quite close till 2-2 but after that we picked up the energy, started playing to our strengths.