Kathmandu, April 27: Rasmi Prasas and Vindya Dayananda won the women’s doubles title in the first King’s Cup Open Tennis Championship beating Cathy Hunt and Francoise Hewitt in the final on Thursday.

The youth pair of Prasad and Dayannda play all-round tennis for a 6-2, 6-4 triumph over Hunt and Hewitt.

In the men’s singles, both Subha Ratna Shahi and Rupert Colbourne, who were tipped to meet in the final lost their semifinals.

Shahi, who played so well against Kamal Bhandari in the first set winning it at 6-1 pulled his muscle in the right arm towards the close of second, which he lost by 5-7. Despite his desperate try, he could hardly continue and forced to retire, thus conceding the match to Bhandari, Shahi at that time was leading by 1-0 in the third of the best of five sets match.

In the other men’s semifinal, Sanu Gurung caused the biggest upset so far, ousting the pre-tournament favourite, Rupert Colbourne in four sets.

Colbourne held the upperhand on quite a number of occasions in the match only to falter away when it mattered most, that eventually cost him the match. After dropping the first set at 3-6, he managed to pull one back, winning the second one 6-2 to level the match. But he has only himself to blame for what happened thereafter.

In the third set, he was one game away from moving 2-1 as he was leading by 5-1 with double break of serves. But he went on committing sequence of mistakes and conceded the set to Gurung at 5-7. It was again the same story in the fourth set and Gurung ended his challenge by taking it at 6-3.

Earlier, Subha Ratna Shahi and Krishna Ghale beat Sharad Lama and Rupert Colbourne in straight sets, 6-4, 7-5, 6-0, to enter the men’s doubles final while Ram Sharan Thapa and Kamal Bhandari set up the final, outclassing their semifinal opposition, Raju Chhetri and Mahesh Shrestha, 6-4, 6-1, 6-0.

Sraddha Basnet and Mallika Rana entered the women’s singles final as they beat Francoise Hewith (6-1, 6-1) and Elizabeth Nott (6-4, 6-4) respectively while Shreyans Karki and Sang Ryal Kim set up the Friday’s final following their respective win over Suraj Shah (9-5) and Utsav Rijal (9-6) in the semifinals. Meanwhile, Manoj Rana, Kamal Thapa, Deepak Shrestha and Madhukar Rana were through to the last four in the veteran’s singles event.

The tournament, organised by All Nepal Lawn Tennis Association in conjunction with sponsor International Leasing and Finance Company and co-sponsors Himalayan Bank Ltd and National Life and General Insurance Ltd to mark the 55th Birthday of His Majesty the King.