Tennis stalwart Leander Paes rued the missed break-point chances that he and Vishnu Vardhan squandered after going down in four sets to the New Zealand pair of Michael Venus and Artem Sitak, here .
“I thought it was a tough contest, a mental battle of strategy. We dominated the first set and in the second set we had them 15-40 down. But from that stage we started to play safe on our returns. At this level safe returns are not going to win matches our returns let us down a bit today,” said Paes after India went down 6-3 3-6 6-7(8-6) 3-6.
The victory by the doubles team kept New Zealand s hopes alive going into the last day of the tie tomorrow after they had lost the first two singles rubbers yesterday.
“We had five break points in the third set early.
