Billie Jean King Cup: Ankita Raina, Karman Kaur Thandi lose opening matches against Latvia
“She plays this kind of, how you call it, ugly game,” 2017 French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko said of Ankita Raina after their opening match of the Billie Jean King Cup World Group play-offs tie.
Whatever the description may be, the 174th-ranked India engaged in a dogfight playing that game with the world No. 52 Latvian before Ostapenko stepped up towards the finish line to win 6-2, 5-7, 7-5 and give the hosts the lead in the best-of-five World Group encounter in the indoor hard courts of the National Tennis Centre Lielupe, Jurmala, on Friday night. World No. 47 Anastasija Sevastova made it 2-0 after defeating the young Karman Kaur Thandi 6-4, 6-0 in the second singles tie.
That the visiting debutant team was in unfamiliar territory showed in the way Raina began proceedings for India at the World Cup stage against the stronger Latvia outfit. The 28-year-old was broken to love in the opening game. “Naturally, there were some nerves,” she told reporters later.
Raina evened things up immediately, but her feeble serve—the biggest work in progress in the top-ranked Indian women pro’s game—had Ostapenko pouncing all over it. Not that Ostapenko was putting on a service masterclass; she was twice broken herself in the first set with Raina specifically attacking her second serves. But the telling stat in a set that saw six breaks of serve in the eight games was this: Ostapenko managed to win eight out of the 18 points on second serve; Raina won nil from seven.
Once Raina began taking care of business from her end of the racquet at the start of the second set, she grew into the contest. And Ostapenko started to slide. In the sixth game, Raina broke the 23-year-old to love with a crisp forehand return winner and backed it up with a service hold to love. Ostapenko—who had 33 unforced errors in the set, more than double in the first—was by then missing even the relatively straightforward shots, the body language and constant chatter giving away her frustration. Yet, Ostapenko got the scoreline from 5-2 down to back on serve at 5-5 while saving a set point. But the spirited Raina, putting on a solid defensive show from the baseline to induce the errors from her opponent, broke the resistance to take the set 7-5 and transfer the feel of nerves to the hosts.
“That is the thing when you play for your country—you fight for each point,” Raina said.
Ostapenko needed a medical timeout to regroup (she later said she had a back issue), which halted Raina’s momentum. Ostapenko broke Raina early in the third set but the Indian struck back to make it 2-2. With the opening encounter right in the balance at 5-5 in the decider, Ostapenko brought out the champion mentality that saw her beat Simona Halep from a set down in the 2017 French Open final and Sofia Kenin in three sets at last year’s Billie Jean King Cup Qualifiers.
Her sloppy errors transformed into sublime winners, two of them coming in the last two points of the 11th game to earn the break and the chance to serve for the match at 6-5. Ostapenko won eight of the final 12 points to get the job done while playing, according to her, at “not even 30% of what I can normally play”.
“I just knew I’m a much better player than her,” Ostapenko said of her mindset towards the end of the match. “She cannot play the entire match at that level. I didn’t play my best, but I had this confidence inside that I’m a way better player and I’m playing on a higher level than her.”
Raina, meanwhile, was largely satisfied with her level against a top-100 player she had never shared the court with before. “As the first set went on, I understood what she was doing and what I needed to change. It was good that I could adapt; probably I could’ve done that a bit earlier. But I did catch up and give it my all,” Raina said in the post-match press conference organised via Eurosport, the official broadcasters of the tie in India.
“Starting this year, I’ve had good performances that make me believe I belong to this level,” she added.
In Friday's second match, the gap between the 2018 US Open semi-finalist Sevastova and the 621st-ranked Thandi was simply too large for the Indians to bridge. To the 22-year-old Thandi’s credit, though, she responded well after twice being broken early in the first set with her big forehands to get on an even keel. But from 4-4, Sevastova reeled off eight straight games to stamp her class on the inexperienced Indian who only returned to the tour this year after a long injury lay-off.
In Saturday’s must-win matches for India, Raina will take on Sevastova before Thandi faces Ostapenko in the reverse singles. Six-time Grand Slam winner Sania Mirza is then scheduled to partner Raina to play the lower-ranked combo of Diana Marcinkevica and Daniela Vismane in doubles.
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