Bhushan Akut, hard-hitting ex-badminton international during his heydays, gave glimpses his prowess on the tennis courts as well while making the men’s semifinals in the plus 45 and plus 55 doubles events in the Khar Gymkhana Maharashtra State Open Senior State Tennis tournament at their courts here today.
Bhushan Akut and GauravKapadia stormed into men’s doubles (Plus 45 )semi finals of the Khar Gymkhana Maharashtra State Open Senior State Tennis tournament. Bhushan is also in the plus 55 doubles semi finals.
With the day restricted to doubles events , Bhushan and Gaurav Kapadia, seeded second, routed Ramchand and Bruce Fernandes 8-1 in the 45 plus doubles quarterfinals. Later Bhushan together with Manoj Chandiramani as his partner in the plus 55 category, also sailed into last four with 6-1,6-2 win over Sunil Kukreja and Harsh Ahuja. However, in the day’s toughest match, Prithvi Ranglani and Toru Devnani had to battle hard to get the better of Mayank Dwividi and Bharat Raghvan in the tie going over to tie-breaker before they triumphed 6-2, 4-6, 10-4.
Results: Men’s (+45) doubles(pre-quarterfinals):Pravin Jadhav/Nishit Pandey bt Rajeev Punjabi/Sunil Kukreja 8-2;Himanshu Bhatia/Neelkanth Damre bt Clifton D’Souza/Ketan Bedekar 8-1; Raj Dube/Siddharth Chatterjee bt Sunil Lalchandani/Rupendra Chadha 8-2; Vipul Verma/Vijaykumar Ramanathan bt Bharat Raghvan/Amod Phadke 8-1; Bhushan Akut/Gaurav Kapadia bt Ramchand/Bruce Fernandes 8-1.
Men’s (+55) doubles(Quarterfinals): Bhushan Akut/Manoj Chandiramani bt Sunil Kukreja/Harsh Ahuja 6-1,6-2; Prithvi Ranglani/Toru Devnani bt Mayank Dwividi / Bharat Raghvan 6-2, 4-6, 10-4; Sanjay Kumar/Clifton D’Souza 6-1, 6-3;Rajeev Punjabi/Kishore Sabnani bt Mahendra Likhite/Sunil Lalchandani 6-3, 6-1.
Men’s (+65) doubles(Quarterfinals): Rama Rao/Dr Pendharkar bt Rajan Shahri/Manmohan Mayal 6-3, 6-1; V.R. Iyer/Kishore Sabnani bt Subhash Trilolekar/SP Dalvi 6-1, 6-1.
Men’s (+35) doubles (pre-quarterfinals): Prasad Nakti/Harsh Kulkarni bt Vinod Kanchawade/Ankush Posture 8-6;