Prakash, at end of tunnel

On Wednesday, Prakash had his chances against Soeda both in the opening and the deciding sets, but each time the eighth seed shut the door on the Indian. Having broken Soeda in the sixth game of the match, Prakash, at 5-3, had two set points but the Japanese them both. Then, aided by some unforced errors from the Indian's racquet, Soeda took a 4-0 lead in the tiebreaker before pocketing the set in 59 minutes. In the third game of the second set, Prakash hit an overhead smash off his third break point to take the lead and held on to it to push the match into the decider.

In the third set, while Prakash frittered away his only break point with a backhand into the net, Soeda got the break to go 5-4 up in what was the longest game of the match. Prakash saved six game points on his serve, but Soeda tactically drew him to the net before hitting a passing winner.

"I didn't have anything left in the tank after that first set. I constructed points well, and the match could have gone straight sets in my favour but Soeda is like a top-50 player for some reason and he showed that today," Prakash said.

Tipsarevic has it easy

Through much of the third set of Prakash's match, second-seed Janko Tipsarevic was sitting on the sidelines, anxiously waiting for his turn. Despite beating Andy Murray in the Abu Dhabi exhibition a few days ago, the Serbian confessed he was very edgy before his first competitive match of the season after getting a first round bye.

However, he betrayed none of that in his 6-2 6-3 win over France's Edouard Roger-Vasselin, as he broke the Frenchman twice in each set and never faced a break point in the entire match.

... contd.