Kirtane, Hayato Furukawa sail into the second round

Wild card Sandeep Kirtane and sixth seed Hayato Furukawa of Japan sailed into the men's singles second round with straight set wins over lesser known opponents in the $6250 ITF men's Satellite circuit tennis in Mumbai on Monday.

In an interesting first round match, Kirtane taught a few lessons to his compatriot and another wild card Vishal Punna before sidelining the latter 7-5, 6-0 in eighty minutes.

Furukawa took sixty-nine minutes to subdue another wild card Rohan Gajjar of India 6-4, 6-4 while in the third first round match of the day between two unseeded players Ciaran Moore of South Africa rallied magnificently, after dropping the first set 2-6, to pip Kamala Kannan of India 2-6, 7-6 (7-5) 6-2 in two hours twenty minutes.

Earlier, in the morning six Indians - Sourabh Kohli, Anant Sitaram, Karan Rastogi, Mohammed Yasser Arafat, Arun Prakash Rajagopalan and Jaco Mathew - and two foreigners - Roy Sichel of Israel and Naoki Arimoto of Japan - qualified for the men's singles main draw.

In the doubles, the Israeli pair of Tomer Suissa and Raviv Volkovitzky took one hour five minutes to defeat the Indian pair of Ajay Chowdapalli and Yasser Arafat 6-4 6-4.

In the second doubles match American Stephen Donovan and his partner Rafael Moreno-Negri subdued the Israeli pair of Roy Sichel and Elad Stern 7-5 6-2 in one hour forty minutes.