Sunil Kumar, Jayalakshmi in final

Defending champions Sunil Kumar and Sai Jayalakshmi entered the men's and women's singles final respectively in the DSCL Open national tennis championships on Friday.

Sixth seeded Sunil will clash with former champion fifth seed Nitin Kirtane in the men's final, while Jayalakshmi will take on Rushmi Chakravorthi in the women's.

In the semi-finals, Sunil, who had last year beaten Mustafa Ghouse in the final, overcame stiff resistance from second seed Vinod Sridhar before winning 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 in two hours, nine minutes.

Nitin Kirtane's victory in contrast was much easier. He had things his way while overcoming eighth seed Rishi Sridhar 6-3, 6-4.

In the women's semi-finals, top seed Jayalakshmi had to draw on all her reserves to down Chandigarh's Shruti Dhawan 4-1, 4-2, 2-4, 3-5, 4-2, while Rushmi beat Radhika Tulpule 4-2, 1-4, 4-2, 4-1.