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The young Indian pair of Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan and Sriram Balaji went down fighting to the second seeded American pair of Scott Lipsky and Rajeev Ram in the doubles event of the Aircel Chennai Open 2012 on Tuesday night.
Nedunchezhiyan and Balaji, aged 23 and 21 respectively, displayed admirable spunk in their 5-7, 4-6 defeat, even breaking their opponents at least twice in the match.
Nedunchezhiyan has a doubles ranking of 993 while Balaji's is 610. The Ram-Lipsky duo's ranking is 74.
The Indian pair thrived on the back of Balaji's strong serving â which crossed 190 kmph consistently â and Nedunchezhiyan's impressive net-play.
The Indians were on a par with their American opponents in the first set, going 5-5 before Ram and Lipsky pulled away.
Many a time, they had their opponents pinned to the baseline after Balaji's thunderbolt serves and won out the point with Nedunchezhiyan's overhead smash.
Ram and Lipsky's experience, however, helped them to tide over their opponents and book a second round spot.
Earlier in the day, the Spanish pair of Nicolas Almagro and Pere Riba downed the veteran Austro-German duo of Julian Knowles and Michael Kohlmann 6-7(4), 6-4 (10-4) in an entertaining encounter that went to tie-breakers twice.
Almagri and Riba will meet the Israeli pair of Andy Ram and Jonathan Erlich next.
In another match, Steve Darcis of Belgium saw off Blaz Kavcic of Slovakia 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 to enter the second round of the singles draw.