2021 Platinum Reports REPORTS

R1: Ramit recovers to get past Greg

R1 : Ramit Tandon (Ind) 3-1 Greg Lobban (Sco) 8-11, 11-7, 11-8, 11-6 (46m)

Ramit Tandon comes from a game down to beat Greg Lobban and set up a clash with December’s BB Champion Fares Dessouky.

A frenetic battle between the Scot and the Indian, in complete contrast with the two previous matches on that court… Very fast pace, volley drop shots, redrop and volleying all over the place, with both players attacking a heck of a lot, as soon as they had the opportunity.

Made it pretty entertaining! Add to that a few interactions with the ref, and they definitely kept me awake, not easy to do after that whole week of action….

First game to Greg, 11/8 in 12m, next 11m to Ramit, 11/7, and that third.. So close at the end but Ramit in control the whole way, 5/2, 7/4, 8/5. Back to 8/8, and it’s all possible. Very quickly though, it’s the Indian up, 11/8, one stroke and two redrops… 9m…

The fourth is very close indeed, 1/1, 2/2, 3/3, 5/5. But as often, the hard work produced during the match is paying off and Ramit collected the dividends, 11/6 with a stunning winner nick to finish it …. 7m last game…

Ramit: Greg and I we train together when he is in NY and he is such a gentleman. Because of the COVID situation we actually spent two, three days chatting and training together, and he is an amazing guy to chat with.

He is also working with Nick Matthew, and I have played a bit with him so I knew Nick would have given him a game plan, probably out of the box… So in the first game, I just tried to find out what he was planning to do, and then from the second game on, I was able to implement my game more.

I could see he was trying to push me to the back, so I was able to put the ball to the front without fear of making too many errors.

The third is crucial, I had a good lead, then I made a few mistakes, and I’m happy I managed to play three good rallies in a row.

In the fourth, I think he got a bit tired from the running around of the previous games, and I was lucky enough he gave me a few points at the end.