Indian Express halted in the second round; Elgin/Istomin prevail – Wimbledon Men’s Doubles 2012
Seventh seeded Indian duo of Mahesh Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna were stunned by an all-round brilliant performance from the Russian-Uzbek tandem of Michail Elgin and Denis Istomin in the second round of the Wimbledon Championships
Men’s Doubles. The Tuesday’s encounter witnessed the Indian Express to suffer a cracking straight sets defeat at the hands of the unseeded pair, finishing at 5-7, 6-7(4), 3-6, to crash out of the Grand Slam event in London, England.
Bhupathi and Bopanna took off their Wimbledon campaign in an emphatic manner by posting a comprehensive victory in the opening round but couldn’t repeat the heroics against Elgin and Istomin to end their voyage in a dismal fashion.
The Indians started off sluggishly in the opening set but posed some serious resistance in the following set. However, the aggressive game play of Elgin and Istomin was too hard for them to tackle and they had to submit in the third set.
Albeit firing 13 aces and winning 55 out of 70 first serve points in the matchup, Bhupathi and Bopanna couldn’t register a single break point in the entire matchup, frittering away two priceless opportunities to finish on the losing
side in the end. Their opponents bagged 57 out of their 73 first serve points and took the better of the Indian seventh seeds by clinching 22 out of 33 points on their second serves. Only two break points were registered in the contest and it came from the
unseeded contenders.
Bhupathi and Bopanna won the toss to serve first and a regular game play was seen from both sides. Elgin and Istomin finally drew the first blood in the 11th game of the opener and broke the Indian serve to lead 6-5.
They served out of the set in the next game and got one up in the match.
The seventh seeded dup tightened up its screws in the following set and didn’t their rivals to break serve at any point, dragging the set into a tie-breaker round. The Indians fell to 1-3 early in the decider and their opponents
went on with their winning momentum to close out the second set at 7-6(4).
Elgin and Istomin kept striking in the third set as well and one serve break in the sixth game proved extremely vital for them to close out victory at 6-3. They will next face the 10th seeded team of Jurgen Melzer and
Philipp Petzschner in the third round of the tournament.
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