Double delight for Basak Erayadin

Basak Erayadin of Turkey has just finished tremendous two weeks in India, by winning four ITF Junior titles. The 16-year-old won both singles and doubles tournament, partnering India’s Tarrannum Handa, of the Delhi ITF tournament last week and followed that up by doing the double in Mumbai as well.

Facing her national teammate, Seda Arantekin, in the singles final of the MSLTA ITF Junior Tennis Tournament on Saturday, the unseeded Basak was at her feisty best. After winning the first set 6-4, she went down 2-6 in the second set after making a number of unforced errors.

The youngster screamed and threw her racquet to the ground many times showing that there was no lack of passion on her part. She came back strongly in the third set with a number of powerful winners, to win the match, 6-4 2-6 6-4.

The dashing teenager is on her first trip to India and will take back fond memories from the short time she was here. “I have had an amazing time. On the court, I just dropped one set in 18 matches, which is a tremendous achievement. I really like India, or whatever I have seen of it so far,” said Basak.

The one discovery she made on the visit to the country is Bollywood. She said, “I absolutely love Indian films. There is so much music and dancing. I watched an Indian movie for the first time in my room and Tarrannum was translating it for me. I did not understand much of it but I loved the music and could not stop myself from dancing and imitating the actors’ crazy moves.”

Basak is the fifth ranked women’s player in her country and though she plays in WTA, she has a chance of winning a junior slam till she turns 18. The next tournament she will participate in is the qualifiers for juniors in the Australian Open.

In the boys’ final, fourth seed Rishabdev Raman defeated top seed Rakshay Thakkar 6-2 2-6 7-6 (4). The winners, Eraydin and Rishabdev earned 40 ITF junior points, while runners-up Rakshay and Seda got 30 points.