India content with Silver in women tennis

DOHA: Sania Mirza's reputation remained unscathed but India missed the team Gold and settled for Silver after a 1-2 defeat at the hands of Chinese Taipei in the final of the women's tennis event at the 15th Asian Games in Doha.

In the first singles, Shikha Uberoi lost 2-6, 5-7 to Hsieh Su Wei before Sania Mirza drew parity, beating Chan Yung Jan 6-2, 6-2. But, in the doubles, Shikha-Sania pair was beaten 7-2, 6-1 by Hsieh and Chuang Chia Jung.

Much was expected from Shikha Uberoi but the US-based Indian could not live up to the expectations and tamely surrendered to Hsieh Su Wei 2-6, 5-7 after a brief, late challenge in the match that lasted 80 minutes.

Su broke Shikha early in the third game and then won the last four games on the trot to pocket the first set in no time. The second set began on an even more ominous note when Shikha was broken in the very first game and her rival won four games in a row to race to a 5-1 lead. The Indian Fed Cupper, however, put a brake on her rival at that point and won the next four games to level at 5-5.

Su, however, showed who's the real boss by winning the next two games to clinch the set and win the match to put Chinese Taipei 1-0 up. It was left to Sania Mirza to keep India in the hunt in the second singles against Chan Yung Jan and she didn't let the country down. Sania beat her opponent 6-2, 6-2 to force the decider.

Neither the Hyderabadi nor her opponent could hold their serves till the fourth game when Sania put her foot down and eventually took 5-1 lead before dropping another game on her way to win the first set in 31 minutes.

Sania began the second set by breaking her opponent and raced to 3-0 before relaxing her grip a bit and losing the next two games. But she didn't allow Yung to make a match of it by snatching three games in a row to seal the second set in just 24 minutes to win the match and draw parity for India.

In the deciding doubles, India re-introduced Sania and Shikha, while Chinese Taipei paired singles winner Su with the unused Chuang Chia Jung. A tense first set went down to the tie-break, after India fought back from being a break down.

However, they were never really in the tie break, which they lost 2-7. It knocked the wind out of their sails and the Chinese Taipei pair looked far stronger in the second set as the increasingly tired Indian duo went down 1-6.

Later an upset Shikha said, ''I feel really sad, but they were the better team. There wasn't much we could do. We made mistakes. It was close in the first set, but things went their way. They outplayed us, and we didn't know how to handle it.''