He is joined here by coach Akhtar Ali, who gave Syed a few workouts under lights yesterday and today, to prepare him for the opener. ``It is always good to acclimatise yourself to the playing conditions, something Fazal did not do at Chandigarh,'' Akhtar said.

Late today evening, Mustafa Ghouse and Vishal Uppal gave the Indians something to cheer about by advancing to the second round of the men's doubles event. Ranked 1915 in the world, the wild-card holders knocked back Satochi Iwabuchi (Japan) and Kevin Kim (USA), ranked 733, 3-6 6-1 7-6 (7-4) in a two hour 25 minute saga.

The Indians almost did not make it, trailing 2-5 inthe final set before rallying back to draw level.

Results (final qualifying round): Markus Polessnig (Aut) bt Ian Bates (GBr) 6-2 6-3; Andrew Reub (US) bt Aisam Qureshi (Pak) 6-4 6-4; Cedric Kauffmann (Fran) bt M Thompson (NZ) 6-3 6-4; Jocelyn Robichaud (Can) bt Ivo Karlovic (Croat) 6-1 6-4; Denis Golovanov (Russ) bt Todd Meringoff (US) 6-4 1-6 6-1; Johan Landsberg (Swed) bt Andy Ram (Israel) 6-3 6-2; Artem Derepasko (Russ) bt Le Minh (US) 6-1 6-4; Simon Aspelin (GBr) bt Marcus Hilpert (Germ) 6-4 6-4.

Men's doubles (1st round): Kalle Flygt & Patrick Fredriksson (Swed) bt Rohan Bopanna & Vijendra Laad (Ind) 6-4 6-3; 2-Jonathan Erlich & Amir Hadad (Isr) bt Oren Motevassel (Isr) & Andrei Stoliarov (Russ) 2-6 6-1 6-2; M Ghouse & V Uppal (Ind) bt S Iwabuchi & Kevin Kim (US) 3-6 6-1 7-6 (7-4).

Jay thumps Amit

Jay Mehta knocked out Amit Karunakaran 9-5 in the first round of the Boys Under-16 main draw of the Rs 26,000 7-up state ranking tennis tournament conducted at Garden Tennis Academy today.Results Boys (u-10): Akshay Maliwal bt Madhavan Narasimhan 8-6; Debendra Das bt Akash Wagh 8-4; Anuj Arora bt Mikhail Saldanha 8-4; Dhruv Rahil bt Gaurav Walia 8-2; Karan Jhaveri bt Nishant Contractor 8-2; Sanket Bapat bt Yuvraj Choksi 8-0; Swapnil Akut bt Karthik Rao 8-2; Pranav Gandhi bt Jairaj Desai 8-3; (u-12): Mirang Manek bt Nikhil Puri 9-4; Keshavan Narasimhan bt Arnav Jain 9-3; Kaushal Mahale bt Avneesh Krishna Kumar 9-3; Ruchinder Nanda bt Akash Wagh 9-0; Siddharth Alapati bt Irshad Allana 9-2; Tejasvi Rai w/o Gaurav Agarwal; (U-14): Keshavan Narasimhan bt Siddharth Chedda 9-4; Krishna Tanna bt Vivek Menon 9-4; Aditya Medkekar bt Ayush Wadhwan 9-1; Alon Moses bt Ruchinder Nanda 9-2; Rishi Behl bt Rahil Makharia 9-2; Devang Shah bt Rohan Gide 9-2; (u-16): Rohan Gajjar bt Sourabh Kohli 9-3; Rishi Behl bt Imran Allana 9-7; Jay Mehta bt Amit Karunakaran 9-5; Vivek Jhaveri bt Tridip Choudhary 9-1; Rewant Dutta bt Chirag Mehta 9-2; Gavryl Fernandes bt Nitin Puri 9-7; Devesh Poddar bt Marvin Coelho 9-4;(u-18): Aashay Deshmukh bt Sunny Ashaldekar 9-2; Pratim Parikh bt Devesh Poddar 9-2; Farhad Ganjawala bt Aniket Paonoji 9-0; Arpan Lakhani w/o Rushang Patel; Rewant Dutta bt Shashank Bada 9-6; Varun Maghikar bt Ashwin Khurana 9-1; Shyam Gala bt Monil Batra 9-4.