Sridhar toys with Bishnoi

Top seed Vinod Sridhar carved out a straight-set victory against wild card Jitin Bishnoi in the first round at the Ira Diamond Jewellery National Ranking Men's Tennis Tournament in Mumbai on Tuesday.

Tamil Nadu's Sridhar, with an overall All India Tennis Association (AITA) points tally of 268 going into the Rs 4-lakh prize money event, whipped Haryana's Bishnoi 6-2, 6-4 in one hour and 15 minutes in their singles encounter at the suburban Juhu Vile Parle Gymkhana courts.

Sridhar will now meet qualifier Aniket Sudhir of Maharashtra, who rallied from a set down to shock another Tamil Nadu player V M Ranjeet (seeded 10th) in three sets, for a place in the quarter finals.

Sridhar broke his rival's serve twice - in the 1st and 3rd games - to clinch the opening set. The title-favourite then swept to victory by breaking his opponent in the 9th game of the second set.

Joining Sridhar in the round of 16 were fourth seed Kamala Kannan (Tamil Nadu), who beat Delhi's Gurmehar Singh in straight sets, sixth seed Gautam Arjun of Karnataka and seventh seed Vishnu Vardhan of Andhra Pradesh.

Arjun and Vardhan notched straight-set wins over Punjab's Gursharan Singh and Pritish Kumar of Karnataka respectively.

In another interesting first round clash, local qualifier Arnav Jain surprised direct entrant L S Ananth Bhaskar of Tamil Nadu 1-6, 7-6 (1), 7-6 (0) after a long drawn-out struggle in hot and humid conditions.