A straight sets victory for the Indian pair of Rohan Bopanna and Divij Sharan helped them clinch the gold medal in the men’s doubles event at the ongoing 18th Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang on Friday.
Entering the competition as the top seeds, Bopanna and Sharan justified themselves and toppled the Kazakhstan duo of Aleksandr Bulbik and Denis Yevseyev 6-3, 6-4 to bag the gold medal.
The Kazakh pair found it tough to handle the quickness of the Indian duo as Bopanna and Sharan dominated the first set and it took them just 25 minutes to win it 6-3.
However, Bulbik and Yevseyev showed some fight in the second set to take it to 3-3. The Indian pair held their serve to make it 4-3 and they eventually went on to attain a 5-4 lead with the resistance of their opponents crumbling.
The inevitable then didn’t take much longer as Bopanna and Sharan clinched the top prize which is India’s sixth gold medal at the Games this year. This was also India’s second gold medal in tennis with singles player Ankita Raina securing for herself a bronze a day ago after losing 4-6, 6-7 to China’s Shuai Zhang. Bopanna and Sharan’s gold-winning feat thus matches Leander Paes who has three doubles gold medals to his name. Paes had won one doubles gold medal with Gaurav Natekar as his partner and has won the top prize twice with Mahesh Bhupathi.
In the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, the duo of Somdev Devvarman and Sanam Singh won the gold medal in the men’s doubles event.