Rohan Bopanna-Divij Sharan advance at Halle Open

The Indian men's doubles pair of Rohan Bopanna and Divij Sharan played together for the first time since the Stockholm Open in October 2019

2 minBy Samrat Chakraborty
Rohan Bopanna takes the serve

Indian men's doubles pair of Rohan Bopanna and Divij Sharan kickstarted their grasscourt season with a 7-6 (6), 6-4 win over Radu Albot and Nikoloz Basilashvili in the opening round of Halle Open on Monday.

The Indian pair, with an eye on Tokyo 2020 qualification, made their first appearance together since the ATP 250 hard-court tournament in Stockholm back in October 2019.

The match, which lasted for an hour an 13 minutes, remained neck and neck in both the sets, but the Indian pair held on to clinch victory.

Bopanna and Sharan will next face the second seeded pair of Édouard Roger-Vasselin and Łukasz Kubot in the Round of 16 on Tuesday.

Bopanna and Sharan remain in contention for Tokyo 2020, on basis of their combined rankings, with the ranking cut-off for entries set at June 14.

Bopanna improved his doubles rankings from 40 to 38 after reaching the quarterfinals of the French Open 2021 while Sharan has slipped from the 73rd to 75th spot.

The International Tennis Federation (ITF), however, is yet to confirm the final list. Doubles players inside the top-10 rank will have a direct entry for Tokyo 2020 with the condition that their partner should rank inside 300.

Each country will be eligible to send a maximum of two doubles team for the Games.

The National Federations have been given the deadline of June 22 to submit the doubles nominations while the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) have the last date of July 5 to submit the entry forms to the Tokyo 2020 organising committee.