Bangalore, June 2: Chandigarh's tennis players permitted Karnataka to walk all over them on the opening day of the inter-state tennis event at the KSLTA Stadium on Monday. The inept Chandigarh squad was such poor opposition that the Karnataka players found it extremely difficult to stay focused and retain their concentration.

  The vastly improved SK Shivashankar took the court first and proceeded to demolish Amanjeet Gill in just 42 minutes. If Gill looked bad, his teammate Birbal Kumar looked worse; woefully out of depth against Prahalad Srinath, one of the Davis Cup reserves in the country.

  The lanky Srinath took only four minutes more than Shivashankar to wrap up the match. But that was probably because Birbal held serve in the fifth game of the first set. Srinath looked listless and bored as the Chandigarh player failed to even stretch him.

  Anand Sukumar and Peter Vijaykumar then teamed up to rattle up a 6-3, 6-4 win over Gill and Janmeet to complete a satisfying day for Karnataka.

  Perhaps the most competitive match of the day was the Red Group encounter between Delhi and Andhra Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh, weakened by the absence of Susheel Narla did not have the depth to defeat Delhi, who, in any case, are no great shakes as a team.

  Delhi gained when Vishal Uppal pulled off a facile win over Vinay Karia. The Delhi player lost just six games in his straight sets win. But Andhra's top player, Vasudev Reddy restored status quo with a 6-0, 6-4 drubbing of Amandeep Singh.

  In the decisive doubles encounter, Vasudev and his partner Yaseer Arafat lost 3-6, 6-2, 7-5 to Amandeep and Vishal.

  In another Blue Group tie, Tamil Nadu beat Rajashthan by two matches to one.   The women's matches were contested at the Century Club. In the only two matches played, Maharshtra beat Kerala 3-0 while Delhi overcame Punjab 2-1.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.