There may be no Sharapova here, but there will be two Marias in the final of the Sunfeast Open WTA Tier III meet tomorrow, when Maria Kirilenko takes on Maria Koryttseva.

The Sunfeast Open script, that had been going a bit awry from the first day itself, when Marion Bartoli, the top seed, lost and Sania Mirza, the third seed pulled out, took a turn for the worse today when Daniela Hantuchova— a crowd favourite and ranked 11th in the world—lost her semi-final to Russian fourth seed Maria Kirilenko.

It was a battle of beauties on court, the glam factor evident in the fight between the second and the fourth seeds. And contrary to popular expectations, it was the Russian, ranked 35th in the world, who held her nerve and played brilliant tennis to show Hantuchova the door 4-6, 6-2, 6-1.

The first set went on expected lines, but from the second, Kirilenko, who last won a WTA title in Beijing in 2005, dug deep into her reserves and there was no looking back. “The first set was tough. In the second I told myself, ‘come on Maria’ and played better,” she said.

The first set saw both seeds holding on to their serves, and taking each game to deuce till the ninth. The ninth saw a moment’s aberration from Kirilenko, who, after fighting off a 0-40 deficit to 30-40, sent a forehand long to hand over the set virtually to Hantuchova. The lanky Slovak made no mistake in holding serve to take the first set 6-4.

... contd.