ITF WTT Cup men's tennis: Khan faces Crawford in final

Pune, March 27 (IANS) Zane Khan of the USA on Saturday made it to the third straight men's singles final and set up the summit clash with Great Britain's Oliver Crawford in the $15,000 ITF WTT Cup men's tennis championships.In the semi-finals, 19-year-old Khan, the winner of the Lucknow and the Indore legs of the Indian ITF swing, upset 25-year-old fifth seeded Swede Jonathan Mridha 6-1, 7-5 in a two-hour 13-minute duel.Khan played flawlessly, breaking Mridha in the second and fourth games of the first set. In the second set, Khan recovered from being 2-5 down to claim five games in a row and win the set and the match.In the second semi-final match between 21-year-old Oliver Crawford of Great Britain stopped the good run of sixth seeded Manish Sureshkumar and won 6-4, 6-2 in one hour and 23 minutes.Crawford, who has the distinction of beating two other Indians Dev Javia and Arjun Kadhe on way to the last-four, meted the same treatment to Sureshkumar who looked jaded due to long matches this week.The Briton broke Sureshkumar in the seventh game in a set that saw as many as five breaks to win the first set 6-4. In the second set, Crawford broke in the third and the fifth games to win the set and the match.Results: Semi-finals (men's singles):Zane Khan (USA) [8] bt Jonathan Mridha (SWE) [5] 6-1, 7-5; Oliver Crawford (USA) [4] bt Manish Sureshkumar (IND) [6] 6-4, 6-2
--IANS qma/