Guangzhou:
In a mixed day for India, Sania Mirza settled for a bronze in the women's singles but she and Somdev Devvarman kept themselves in the gold medal hunt by storming into the finals of their respective doubles tennis events of the Asian Games on Sunday.
Much was expected from Sania in the singles but the Indian went down fighting against the big-serving third seed Akgul Amanmuradova 7-6 (7), 3-6, 4-6 in the quarter-finals.
Making up for that loss, Sania later reached the finals of the mixed double along with Vishnu Vardhan as the Indian pair shocked top seed Thai pair of Tamarine Tanasugarn and Sanchai Ratiwata 6-3 6-7 (3) 10-5 in the semifinals.
In the Doha Asian Games, Sania had won a gold medal in the mixed doubles with Leander Paes, who skipped this edition due to World Tour Finals in London, and a silver in singles.
In men's competition, Somdev assured himself of at least a bronze by beating Chinese Zhang Ze 6-4 6-4 to reach singles semifinals and also advanced to the men's doubles final with compatriot Sanam Singh.
The sixth seed Indian pair pipped unseeded Koreans Jae Cho-Soong and Kim Hyun Joon 6-3 7-5 in the semifinals.
However, Karan Rastogi missed out on a medal after losing his men's singles quarterfinal 2-6 6-4 5-7 to top seed Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan.
Sania lost the long-drawn-out battle, that lasted two hours and 49 minutes, largely because of unforced errors.
Sania committed five double faults when she was serving for the first set at 5-4. Later she led 6-2 in the tie-break before it became 6-6 before she finally clinched it 9-7.
The set lasted 74 minutes and drained the Indian.
In the second set, the hard-serving Uzbek broke her for a 4-3 lead and then surged to take it 6-3.
The decisive break in the final set, that went with serve, came in the 10th game when Sania muffed three forehands to be down 0-40.
She tried to get out of the situation with an inside-out forehand to finish a rally but only ended up putting the ball into the tram-lines and lost the set and the match.
Sania, looking glum, said later that her rival was the better player on the day.
"We played for an hour and 45 minutes and it could have gone either way. She was the better player on the day. Her main strength is her serves which she mixes up well," Sania, ranked 166th on the women's circuit, said.
Second seed Somdev, ranked 106 on the ATP circuit, fought back from 1-4 down in the opening set to complete his straight set win in one hour and 51 minutes.
Somdev though had to call tournament director Chen Shu of China to court to settle a controversial ruling by umpire I M Chahoo of Korea.
The incident happened when Somdev was up 3-0 in the second set after having wrapped up the first with the help of two breaks of serve in 50 minutes. He was down 0-40 on his serve when he hit an easy overhead kill only to see the umpire ask for a replay of the point.
The umpire wanted the point to be replayed as even before the winning shot had been essayed by the Indian player, a ball boy rolled a ball on to the court.
Miffed Somdev argued with the chair official, forced Shu on to the court before it was finally decided to replay the point and the Indian dropped the serve promptly.
The Tripura lad later slammed the incident and said he had never been involved in any such case.
"I don't know whether it (the ball boy's action as his opponent was a Chinese) was deliberate or not. I had an easy put-away and I thought I had won the point only for it to be replayed. I felt pretty crappy," he said after his victory.
"I was pretty upset but I told myself to move on and I won. Never before such a thing has happened to me," he added.
However, a good incident involving Rastogi happened on court 2.
Rastogi, who fought bravely before going down against world number 44, was down match point in the third set when a forehand winner was called out by the linesman.
But Istomin, in a gesture of grand sportsmanship, said the ball was good and Rastogi went on to hold serve, break back for 4-5 and leveled at 5-5 by holding serve before conceding the set and the match by dropping the 12th serve game.
"It was commendable of him to do that," said Rastogi about his Uzbek rival.
In the Somdev-Zhang clash, the Indian made a lot of unforced errors which were repaid by his rival. Somdev committed three forehand errors and was broken by his rival but came storming back by breaking back in the seventh.
Somdev broke again to lead 5-4 when Zhang hit his forehand into the net. The Indian made a rare approach to the net to put away a volley in the next game to lead 40-15 when serving for the set and then held serve and clinched it when his rival's return of serve was long.
Somdev was quickly up 3-0 when his rival took a medical break to attend to his calf muscle. Then followed the incident involving the ball boy to upset Somdev that helped his rival retrieve a service break in the fourth game.
But Somdev broke Zhang again in the seventh game to take a 5-2 lead and held two match points when he was broken again (5-3).
However, he held his composure after his rival played a good service game to hold serve at 15 with a back-hand pass.