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What's the story?
The Indian Davis Cup team will be facing Finland in a World Group I away tie, which is being considered as a favorable draw for the Indian team.
In case you didn't know...
The Davis Cup is the premier team event in men's tennis. It was earlier played in a knock-out format with the matches being played from Friday to Sunday. It comprised two men's singles matches played on a Friday, followed by a men's doubles on Saturday and two reverse singles' matches on Sunday.
This format has undergone a change from the 2019 edition with the World Group encounters being played in a single location over a week. Each tie was changed from a best-of-five encounter to a best-of-three encounter, comprising two singles and one doubles match, with the individual matches also being played in a best-of-three set format from the erstwhile best-of-five set format. The World Group qualifiers and the zonal level ties continue to be played at individual locations as best-of-five encounters but with the matches being reduced to best-of-three sets and played over just 2 days.
India had failed to qualify for the World Group after losing 1-3 to Croatia in their qualifier encounter earlier in the month.
Heart of the matter
The Indian Davis Cup team has been drawn to face Finland in the Davis Cup World Group I away tie to be played in September.
The tie scheduled for September 18th-19th/19th-20th is being considered as a relatively easy tie for the Indian men's tennis team considering the rankings of the Finnish players.
Emil Ruusuvuori is the highest-ranked Finnish singles player with a World Ranking of 101 while there is no other singles player within the top 400 of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) rankings. Although the Finnish doubles might have the services of Henri Kontinen, the former World No. 1 in men's doubles and currently ranked 30th in the ATP doubles ranking, his partner will be relatively inexperienced.
The Indian team, comprising veterans like Leander Paes and Rohan Bopanna along with promising singles players like Sumit Nagal, Ramkumar Ramanathan and Prajnesh Gunneswaran, would fancy their chances to come through this tie.
The Indian Davis Cup captain Rohit Rajpal sounded confident of qualifying for the next stage but also admitted that none of the teams can be taken lightly in the Davis Cup.
“Yes, it’s a favourable draw for us. But in Davis Cup World Group, no team is easy. We have enough time to prepare, I am sure will qualify for next stage”
What's next?
The winner of this tie will advance to the Davis Cup Qualifiers, which would give them a shot at qualifying for the Davis Cup World Group in 2021.
The Indian Davis Cup team would like to put their best foot forward and give a fitting farewell to Leander Paes as this could be his last tie in an illustrious Davis Cup career.
