New Delhi: 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 1 hour and 55 minutes at the Centre Court of the RK 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.
Unforced errors, though, continued to flow from both sides of the courts and it all boiled down to who will put more balls in the court.
The decisive third set belonged to the Indian as she broke her opponent in the first and fifth game to put herself ahead 4-1. Although she too dropped her serve twice but eventually pocketed the match by breaking Rgowska for one last time.
"When you are not timing the ball well, you have to do something different. I am happy I could fight back. My game is aggressive but I had to run," she said.
"I knew she would not be able to beat me otherwise she would have been in top 50. But she played a great match," Sania added.
Earlier in the Somdev match, unlike the previous contests, the semifinal featured long rallies but Somdev had strong enough legs and stamina to outlast his opponent.
Ebden was coming into this match after playing an energy-sapping three-setter against British Joshua Goodall and perhaps had not recovered from the gruelling encounter.
Nevertheless, he did pose some questions for Somdev but the Indian was equipped with enough answers.
The match never rose to expected highs ever since Ebden dropped his serve in the first game. The Australian slowly picked up but Somdev gradually tightened his grip over the match. The Indian broke Ebden twice in both the sets.
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