Anirudh Chandrasekhar (India) and Ray Ho (Chinese Taipei) secured their place in the semi-finals of the ATP 125 Bengaluru Open Challenger with a hard-fought 7-6, 7-5 victory over the Indian duo of SD Prajwal Dev and Aryan Shah. Following the match, both Chandrasekhar and Ho shared their thoughts on their performance and their upcoming semi-final clash.

Haresh: Just your thoughts on the match with the two sets close.

Anirudh: Tricky conditions for us because we are playing in the lights for the first time so the balls travel a little slower. The altitude doesn’t come into effect as much but I felt we adjusted well. Ray especially served really well. So that gave us a lot of confidence as a team and all I had to do was support and I felt he carried us through.

So it was important that we got this win because we’ve been working really hard. So I’m looking forward to another match tomorrow.

Haresh: Ray, you had a couple of close losses the last couple of weeks, so you lost first round. So how does this week getting to the semi-finals feel?

Ray Ho: Like we lost two first rounds last two weeks but we never doubt ourselves and we keep working hard and yeah this week pays off. What we do in the practice and what we talk about like how we gonna win a match.

So it’s really good and we hope to keep going.

Haresh: Anirudh, you are going to play fellow Indians at a local tournament. Will that be having the extra motivation or pleasure playing such a situation?

Anirudh: It’s always a pleasure playing Indians because you know for a fact that one other Indian team is going to go to the finals. So we’re going to enjoy the match and take it as it comes, but no pressure. So that’s how we’ve been approaching every match as a team, so this is nothing new for us.

Haresh: And also playing the defending champions tomorrow, Saketh and Ramanathan, just your thoughts on that match up.

Anirudh: It’s a tricky team for sure. They are big servers both of them and definitely there’ll be an advantage for them because of the altitude. But we are going to just keep fighting, try our best and hopefully we take it to them tomorrow.

Photos by Deepthi Indukuri, KSLTA