Ramkumar Ramanathan and Saketh Myneni pose with their silver medal during the presentation ceremony of men’s doubles final tennis event at the Hangzhou Asian Games on September 29, 2023.
| Photo Credit: PTI
Ramkumar Ramanathan’s frustrations were writ large in his body language before Chinese Taipei’s three Asian Games gold medal points. The Indians were up against a clinical Chinese Taipei pair, Jason Jung and Hsu Yu-hsiou, and the Chinese fans, who were raucous in their support for the Taiwanese. Their constant chattering and shouting before and in between points had got to Ramanathan, who threw his racquet down in protest and looked towards the referee. But the match official asked him to continue playing. With Jung ready to serve, he didn’t even set himself up at the net but he wasn’t called into action as Saketh Myneni hit it long in his return.
It was a disappointing end to what has been an underwhelming tennis campaign so far for India as Myneni and Ramanathan lost in the final 4-6, 4-6 to finish with a silver medal here at the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Centre on Friday. Saketh had a chance to improve on his second-place finish from 2014 but it wasn’t to be.
Ramkumar, who medalled for the first time in the Games, said, “The crowd didn’t know when to shout and when not to shout, which was a little bit tough for both teams. Between the first and second serves and returns, it breaks the rhythm a lot. But that was the case for both of us. If they [crowd] could have been better, it could have been better for us.”
After having won eight successive points on serve, Ramkumar’s service was broken in the fifth game which gave Taipei a 3-2 lead and eventually set itself up to seize the momentum in the final. In fact, India lost only five serve points in the opening set with four of them coming in Ramkumar’s service game, where both Jung and Hsu returned well. The Taipei team was strong with its serve and volley as they took the first set 6-4 in 35 minutes.
Ramkumar and Myneni, who had finished their semifinal match at 6.15 p.m. on Thursday at the center court, looked off the pace in the early start here against the Taipei duo, who were sharp throughout with their service games and their return on serves. The Indians didn’t help themselves by racking up the unforced errors against their names with Saketh, in particular, struggling at the net.
In the second set, the break for Taipei was eventually coming as both Ramkumar and Saketh had…
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