Divij Sharan in line for a treble

Wild card Divij Sharan set himself up for a triple crown when he defeated men's top seed Vinod Sridhar in a three-set cliff-hanger while the Bhambri sisters - Ankita and Sanaa - turned the women's final into a family affair in the 12th DSCL Open National Tennis Championship in Delhi on Friday.

Sharan, who is having a dream run in this tournament, not only overcame a spirited challenge but also nerves to record a 7-6(7/5), 2-6, 7-6 (7/4) victory over the defending champion.

In the final, he will face second seed Punna Vishal, who defeated sixth seed Kamala Kannan 4-6, 6-3, 6-2.

In the boys' category, the south-paw, seeded second, will face Navdeep Singh in the summit clash and will partner Somdev Verman in the men's doubles final against Ajay Ramaswami and Rishi Sridhar.

The semi-final between the two south-paws started on an even platform as both broke each other's serve twice to take the first set into a tie-breaker, which Sharan won with relative ease.

The junior player then started to feel cramps in his legs at the start of the second set and had to be administered medical attention. The experienced Sridhar grabbed this chance with both hands and took the second set 6-2.

In the decider, Sharan regrouped himself and broke his opponent's serve in the fourth game to take a 3-1 lead.

But the 17-year-old, serving for the match at 5-3, failed to hold his nerve and made a number of unforced errors to surrender the initiative to his opponent.

Sridhar not only took advantage of these errors but also broke Sharan in the 11th game to serve for the match.

However, Sharan had different plans as he forced his way back into the tie by breaking Sridhar's serve and then won the tie-breaker 7-4, after missing out on two match-points.

In the women's semi-finals, fourth seed Ankita defeated fifth seed Shruti Dhawan 7-5, 6-3 while Sanaa got the better of seventh seed Samrita Sekhar 4-6, 6-3, 6-2.

Sanaa who along with her sister will face the pair of Geeta Manohar and Archana Venkataraman in the women's final, failed to line herself up for a triple crown as she went down against S Punam Reddy of Andhra Pradesh 6-1, 6-7(5/7), 6-7 (6/8) in the girls' semi-final.

The 16-year-old Hyderabad girl, who had defeated second seed Sai Jayalakshmi in the women's pre-quarter-finals, came up with big winners when under pressure, to wrap up the tie in two hours and 30 minutes.

Reddy will now face second seed Madhura Ranganathan, who brought an end to the dream run of local lass Parul Goswami, 6-3, 7-5.

In the boys' semi-finals, Sharan had no problems while defeating N Jeevan 6-4, 6-4 while Navdeep was stretched to the limit by Saurabh Kohli.

The Dubai-based Navdeep eventually won the tie 6-1, 5-7, 7-6(14/12).