Outlasted Conrad

29 April '06
Just through with our match against Germany and we won 3-2! Chetan lost his first singles match against Bjorn Joppien. Bjorn played well, but I was a little surprised that Chetan fell in straight sets as Arvind had beaten Bjorn last time they played. I'd also taken a game off him when I played Bjorn a year ago.

I played Conrad Hueckstaedt next in the second singles. I won 22-20, 14-21, 21-6. This was the first time I played Conrad though I'd seen him playing before. I felt he played really well, but the only reason I lost the second game was because I decided to take chances and go for the lines and ended up making too many errors. I could see that he was tiring by the end of the second game so I changed my strategy for the third. I played a little safer and decided to wear him down. There were some long rallies at the start of the third game and I guess he was very tired by then. I kept up the pace and moved him around a lot and won easily at 21-6.

Arvind beat Roman Spitko next in the third singles and beat him in three games. The third game was quite close but Arvind always had a lead of 2-3 points and finished it off successfully.

Thomas Kurien and Jaseel Ismail played next and lost rather easily to Ingo and Hopp in straight games. The last and deciding match as between Rupesh and Diju, our scratch combination against Fuchs and Spitko. Rupesh and Diju won a close first game and then went on to win the second quite easily giving us the third point and thus the win over Germany! We will now play New Zealand in the pre-quarterfinals on 1st May.