Tennis: Paes and Bupathi thriller

Indians Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi survived seven match points in a gripping men's tennis doubles final against Thai twins Sanchai Ratiwatana and Sonchat Ratiwatana, to win the gold medal 5-7, 7-6, 6-3 at Khalifa Courts on Wednesday.

The Ratiwatana brothers had the consolation of silver, while Cecil Mamiit and Fredrick Taino of the Philippines and Korea's Jun Woong Su and Kim Sun Young won bronze medals.

Paes and Bhupathi, top seeds and defending champions, edged into a 2-0 lead in the first set, but the Thais settled and started to improve. With the score at 3-2 they broke the Indian serve and repeated the feat at the end of the set to win 7-5.

The second set lasted for more than one hour and regularly had a boisterous crowd on their feet. The majority were flag and banner-waving Indians, reeling from Sania Mirza's defeat in the women's singles final earlier in the day and hungry for gold.

The four players displayed some brilliant doubles play with fast rallies, sharp volleys, beautiful passing shots and fierce returns. At 1-1, with Sonchat serving, Paes and Bhupathi had a chance to break the Thai's serve. After six deuce points, the Thai twins won the game with a strong serve and gained in confidence, with the Indians refusing to surrender.

Thailand's twins secured three match points later in the set, but some thunderous smashes and a subtle Paes volley brought the score to deuce. The Thais failed to claim three match points after that, before Paes and Bhupathi eventually won the game and forced a tie break. The Indians survived one more match point before winning 9-7 to take the match to a third set.

Paes and Bhupathi won the first game of the final set before rain interrupted play for about half an hour. When the match resumed, the Indian pair immediately broke the Thais serve for a 2-0 lead. Ratiwatana and Ratiwatana bounced back and broke service, but Paes and Bhupathi again broke the twins' serve to lead 3-1. The Thais broke back in the subsequent game, only to lose their service again immediately afterwards.

Paes served for the match at 5-3, but the pressure got to him and he produced some weak serves. At 15-40, Ratiwatana and Ratiwatana looked like they had the game, but Paes volleyed to go to 30-40, before Bhupathi had a lucky break when the ball bounced off the frame of his racquet and landed just over the net for deuce. The tension around the stadium was evident as Paes finished off the match with two good serves to send the sizeable Indian contingent wild with delight.

After the thrilling win, Paes said, "I am just relieved. It's been a really long week, and to come up with the win is just great. I must say we have worked hard all week. We have done a lot of practice and you can see that we have come up with wins.

"We must have saved six or seven match points in the second set. It just goes to show that we fought hard, and won by the skin of our teeth. I must congratulate the Thais, they threw everything at us, including the kitchen sink. But once we won the second set I knew we were going to win. They were very unlucky not to win the match in straight sets."

Sanchai Ratiwatana said: I had a great feeling about today. I tried everything I could to win, but we just lost. They played really good, and on the important points they were just unbelievable. It's a great feeling to play here, and especially to play at this level."

15th Asian Games, Doha 2006