Ankita Raina, Karman Kaur Thandi loses in the opening matches against Latvia

“She’s playing this kind of ugly game, as you call it,” said 2017 French Open champion Yelena Ostapenko of Ankita Raina after the opening game of the group’s World Cup qualifiers, Billie Jean King.

Whatever the description, India, numbered 174, took part in a fierce battle, playing this match with the Latvian number 52 in the world, before Ostapenko moved towards the finish line to win with 6-2, 5-7, 7-5 and hand over the hosts. Liloubi National Tennis Center indoor hard courts, Jurmala, on Friday evening leading the way to the top five groups in the world. Anastasia Sevastova, who is in the 47th place in the world, reached 2: 0 after defeating the youthful Karman Koeur Tandija in the second single with 6-4, 6-0.

The fact that the away team was a newcomer to an unfamiliar territory showed the way Raina started India’s action in the World Cup against the strongest Latvian team. In the opening match, the love of the 28-year-old man was broken. “Of course there was some tension,” she later told reporters.

Raina immediately corrected things, but her poor serve – the biggest job being done in India’s top-rated professional ladies game – made Ostapenko flip her everywhere. Not that Ostapenko offered improved service hours; In the first set, she was broken twice because Raina specifically attacked her second serve. But the statistics that affected the group, which had six serve breaks in eight matches, were as follows: Ostapenko was able to score eight out of 18 points in the second service; Raina from the seventh did not win anyone.

When Raina started sponsoring the business from the end of the racket at the beginning of the second group, it turned into a competition. And Ostapenko began to slip. In the sixth game, Raina beat the 23-year-old girl to love him with great blows ahead and raised them with a strong serve. Ostapenko – who has 33 optional offenses in the set, more than twice as much as the first – lacked even relatively direct punches, body language and constant chatter at the time, which got rid of her frustration. However, Ostapenko played 5: 2 with 5-5, maintaining a fixed point. But the moody Rayna, performing a solid defense demonstration from the starting level to cause the opponent’s mistakes, broke the resistance against taking a 7-5 set and passing the nerves to the home team.

“It’s a matter of playing for your country – you fight for every point,” Raina said.

To regroup, Ostapenko needed medical time (she later said she had back problems), stopping Rainis. Ostapenko stopped Rain at the start of the third set, but El Hindi responded, reaching 2-2. With the opening of the playoffs at 5-5 in the playoffs, Ostapenko showed the champion mentality that led her to beat Simon Halep of the group in the 2017 French Open final and Sofia Kenin in three sets in last year’s Billy Jean King Cup qualifier.

Her dirty mistakes turned out to be excellent winners, two of whom were in the last two points of the eleventh shift to earn a break and a chance to serve the match at 6-5. Ostapenko scored eight out of 12 points to get the job done, according to her: “Not even 30% of what I can usually play.”

“I knew I was much better than him,” Ostapenko said of his thinking near the end of the match. “She can’t play the whole match at this level. I didn’t play the best, but I had the conviction that I was a better player and playing at a higher level. ”

Rayna, meanwhile, was largely pleased with her form against the top 100 players she had never played on the pitch before. “As the first group continued, I realized what they were doing and what I needed to change. It was nice to be able to adapt, maybe I could do it a little earlier. “After the post-match press conference organized by Eurosport, the official game broadcasters in India,” said Raina. But I understood it and gave everything I had. ”

She added: “Since this year, I have shown some good performances that make me think I belong to this level.”

In Friday’s second match, the gap between Sevastov, the US Open semi-finalist 2018, and Thani, 621, was too big for the Indians to cross. But for 22-year-old Thandy, she responded well after breaking twice at the start of the first set with big bow strokes for an even wedge. But from 4 to 4 Sevastova went to eight matches in a row to defeat an inexperienced Indian, who returned to the tour this year only after a long absence due to injury.

On Saturday’s Indian victory in Raina’s games with Sevastov, he will face Tandy Ostapenko in the reverse singles. Afterwards, six-time Grand Slam winner Sanya Mirza is collaborating with Raini to play the underrated groups of Diana Marcinkevich and Daniel Fisman in doubles.

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