Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi won the doubles tie as India continued their domination over China to take an unassailable 3-0 lead in their Davis Cup Asia Oceania Group I encounter in New Delhi on Saturday and book a berth in the next round.
After Harsh Mankad gave India a 1-0 lead on the opening day yesterday, Prakash Amritraj made it 2-0 with a straight set win over Wang Yu earlier today before Paes and Bhupathi completed the scoreline with a win over Yu and Zhu Ben-Qiang in the doubles rubber.
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Paes and Bhupathi then struggled a bit but their experience proved too much for Yu and Qiang as the Indians won 7-6 (13/11), 6-3, 3-6, 6-1, in two hours and 45 minutes.
India, who had earlier defeated China in 1997 and 2001, would now meet the winner of the match between Indonesia and Uzbekistan for a place in the World Group play-off.
The Chinese, with little experience on playing on grass, never looked comfortable against the Indians and surrendered rather meekly in the singles but did put up a fight in the doubles with their left-right combination of Yu and Zhu.
The dead reverse singles, which will pit Amritraj against Peng and Mankad against Yu to be played on Saturday, would now be best of three affairs.
It was not an easy outing for Paes and Bhupathi, playing together for the first time after the Athens Olympics in August last year, as the Chinese pair of Yu and Zhu stretched them to the hilt.
Though the Indians had their opponents under constant pressure in the first set, Yu and Zhu managed to come up with big points to save their serves, forcing the set into a tie-break.
The pendulum kept oscillating from one end to another in the ensuing tie-breaker as India wasted three set points and China four, before Paes and Bhupathi wrapped up the set 7-6 (13/11) in the longest tie-break played by an Indian pair in the history of the event.
The earlier record was held by Ramesh Krishnan and Paes against Marc Rosset and Jakob Hlase of Switzerland in 1993 when they won the tiebreak 12-10 in the second set at Kolkata.
The former world number one pair then began to pile up the pressure on their opponents and looked like they were going to run away with the match.
Egged on by a vociferous weekend crowd, the Indians started to find their rhythm and broke Zhu's serve in the eighth game to pocket the set at 6-3.
The Chinese gave their best to stay in the match as also the tie and their efforts were rewarded when Paes failed to hold on to his serve in the sixth game of the third set.
Though the Indians saved three set points thereafter, Yu held his nerves to take the set 6-3 keeping the visitors' hopes of staging a comeback.
It served as a wake up call for Paes and Bhupathi as they then broke Yu's serve in the second as also the sixth game to take the set and the match 6-1.
Earlier, Amritraj, playing for the first time at home, displayed a perfect serve and volley game on grass to beat the left handed Chinese in the second singles match.
This was also Amritraj's maiden Davis Cup win in five appearances. He had lost his two singles matches against Netherlands in the World Group play-off in 2003 and had also gone down in both the matches against Japan last year.
Resuming at 6-3, 2-3 this morning, Amritraj came out with purpose and dominated the proceedings for most part of the one hour 50 minute encounter.
The only time Yu looked like coming back into the match was between the third and fifth game of the third set but the 22-year-old, son of legendary Vijay Amritraj, raised his game to wrap up the rubber.
Amritraj bagged the first three games of the day to race to a 5-3 lead in the second set. Yu tried to stay in the set by saving three break points in the ninth game but Amritraj, who did not drop a single point in his first two service games, closed the set at 6-4.
In the third set, Yu began on a promising note and though he lost his serve in the third game he got the break back in the very next with a couple of down the line winners to restore parity at 2-2.
But that was all the Chinese could do as Amritraj won the next four games in a row breaking Yu in the fifth and seventh game to put India in the driver's seat.
In the first singles yesterday, Harsh Mankad had packed off Sun Peng to give India a flying start.
Results:
India 3, China 0
Doubles:
Leander Paes/Mahesh Bhupathi (Ind) bt Wang Yu/Zhu Ben-Qiang (Chn) 7-6 (13-11), 6-3, 4-6, 6-1
Singles:
Harsh Mankad (Ind) def Sun Peng (Chn) 7-5, 6-3, 6-2
Prakash Amritraj (Ind) bt Wang Yu (Chn) 6-3, 6-4, 6-2
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