Sania Mirza and debutant Ankita Raina crashed out of the Tokyo Olympics on Sunday despite dominating a large part of their women's doubles opener against Ukraine's twin sisters Nadia and Lyudmila Kichenok.
Sania and Raina ran away from the competition, but in a dramatic turnaround, the Kichenok sisters came back from the dead to win a 0-6, 7-6(0), 10-8 win on Court 11 of Ariake Tennis. Center.
Sania was serving for the match 5-3 in the second set but lost her serve. From there, the match turned on its head, no longer an encounter in which the Ukrainians struggled with their serve and return. The Indians became the victims and the Ukrainians swooped down on them to win the second set tiebreak 7-0.
In the super tiebreak, Sania and Raina were down 1-8 before they went 8-8 with seven straight points. However, he lost the next two points, ending his Tokyo 2020 campaign.
Earlier, the Indians broke the Ukrainians in the second game of the match and took the lead. This was followed by an easy service hold for the Indians and a dropped serve sequence for their rivals. Mirza and Raina won the first set in just 21 minutes.
In the second game of the second set, the Kichenok sisters finally took over the board when Raina's backhand return went over the baseline. Raina went 40-15 ahead in the third game but buried a forehand return in the net and Sania too stumbled across the net to deuce it. The young Indian had held the nerves to serve the game with consistent points. Nadia's two double faults put the Ukrainians in trouble but they came out unscathed with some solid net play, making it 2-2.
Sania hit a crushing forehand winner to earn a break chance in the sixth game but Raina's backhand return was sent for a drop volley winner. Another chance comes for India but Raina nets his backhand from the baseline. Sania's backhand serve return winner gave the Indians another chance and they didn't miss it this time to go up to 4-2.
Raina had an easy hold in the next round and was now a game away from the second round. Serving for the match, Sania went down 15-30 but pulled off a well-calculated lob to escape the threat. However, he made two consecutive errors to give the Ukrainian his first break, the second a long backhand.
From there, the match changed dramatically and the Ukrainians started calling the shots.