Sumit Nagal ran out of steam to lose to China’s Shang Juncheng 6-2, 3-6, 5-7, 4-6 within the second spherical of the Australian Open on Thursday.
The 26-year-old began brightly, taking the primary set with a canter in 40 minutes, earlier than the 18-year-old from China upped the ante and received the conflict in 2 hours and 50 minutes. The Chinese language participant will tackle Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz within the third spherical.
The Chinese language participant, who was handed a wild card into the match, raised his degree visibly after dropping the primary set. After making 17 unforced errors within the first set, he drastically decreased his errors. His service additionally obtained higher, and he was main 5-2 with two breaks within the second recreation.
So medical was the Chinese language after dropping the primary set that Nagal noticed only one break level within the final three units.
The India No 1 participant had made historical past by making it to the second spherical after defeating straight units to advance into the second spherical of the Australian Open. Nagal had introduced down twenty seventh seed Alexander Bublik 6-4, 6-2, 7-6 (5) within the first spherical of the Australian Open, which had made him the primary Indian since Ramesh Krishnan in 1989 to beat a seeded participant within the singles fundamental draw of a Grand Slam.
Regardless of the defeat in spherical 2, by courtesy of the spherical 1 victory, the 26-year-old walks away with Aus$180,000 (round Rs 98 lakh) in prize cash.
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Nagal, who’s the top-ranked Indian singles participant, had defeated Slovakia’s Alex Molcan within the closing qualifying match to make it to the principle spherical. He had not dropped a single set in three matches of qualifying to achieve the principle draw: the fourth time in his profession that he was that includes in the principle draw at a Grand Slam.
For a lot of final 12 months, Nagal was ranked outdoors the highest 500 attributable to a collection of accidents. However he recovered to prop up his rating to world no 122.