Poonacha, Humeira win in AITA tennis titles

Kolkata, April 13 (IANS) Local girl Yubrani Banerjee failed to impress as she faltered in the women's singles final of the Central Excise Open AITA Men's & Women's National Ranking Tennis Tournament, at the synthetic courts of the Bengal Tennis Association Complex on Saturday.In the men's singles final, India No. 8 and the top seed of the draw, Niki Poonacha of Andhra Pradesh won the title by defeating Dakshineshwar Suresh 6-3 6-4.Third seeded Yubrani seemed clueless in the opening set and made a series of errors to hand over the set to Humeira 1-6. The local challenger got her rhythm back and kept a ball extra to frustrate the hard-hitting Humeira as the former won the set by a close 6-4.In the decider, both players held serves till 5-5, where crowd-favourite Yubrani dropped serve, allowing Humeira to clinch the title and walk away with 40 valuable national ranking points.
--IANS dm/kk/pcj