Doubles specialist Sriram Balaji, who was surprisingly chosen to play singles by captain Rohit Rajpal, shares his thoughts on the match against 238th ranked Elias Ymer. Balaji lost the match 4-6 2-6, before Ramkumar Ramanathan lost to Leo Borg, putting India 2-0 down against Sweden.

Q) You were broken in the first game itself…

Balaji – Yeah, in both the sets, that set at all for him. So yeah, first set and then the first game of the second set I got broken.

First set I had a chance to break back when he was serving 5-4. But he played solid tennis and I was a little unlucky. I don’t play much singles, as doubles is my priority. He was reading my serve where I was going, so he was already there and he had a very good return.

And a few points like he was hitting it strong from the baseline, I didn’t have much options to work with him. Credit to him. He knew he was playing against a doubles player and had to take care of his own service games.

Q) When did you know you were going to play singles? You played singles against Pakistan in the Davis Cup earlier this year as well.

Balaji – That was different, but this (Ymer) is like a professional player competing throughout the year. If I had held the first game, then maybe things could have changed, because I was feeling the ball was a good last couple of days in the practice sets. That was the reason why the captain (Rohit Rajpal) put me in for singles. I got to know about playing singles just 2-3 days ago.

Q) Were you comfortable playing singles, given you play just doubles on the ATP circuit?

Balaji – If you ask me, doubles is my priority. Through the year I’m only playing doubles, so I don’t play singles that much. So not really comfortable playing singles now because I don’t play singles that much these days. But when the country needs me, I am ready to put my hand up for singles.

Photos – Patrick Bengtsson