Indian pair of Sania Mirza and Prarthana Thombare settled for a bronze after losing their women’s doubles semifinal to Chinese Taipei’s Chin Wei Chan and Su Wei Hsiehin in the Asian Games, in Incheon on Sunday.
The fifth seeded Indian combo put up a brave fight before going down 6-7 (1-7), 6-2, 10-4 to the Chinese Taipei duo, seeded second, at the Yeorumul Tennis Courts.
Sania and Prarthana took the courts and toiled hard for an hour and 35 minutes but at the end failed to make it to the finals.
Both the pairs fought hard in the opening frame to take the set to a tiebreaker. The Taipei duo finally managed to win the set after nearly an hour’s play.
The Indians, however, came back strongly in the second set and managed to prevail over their higher ranked opponents in just 32 minutes.
But the deciding set turned out to be a cake-walk for the Taipei combination as they took barely 10 minutes to seal it 10-4 and draw the curtains on the tie.
Earlier, Yuki Bhambri had clinched India’s lone singles’ medal in tennis after settling for a bronze in the men’s event following a 6-3, 2-6, 1-6 loss to Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka in the semifinal.
