ISLAMABAD, Nov 15: Top Pakistan players Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi and Aqeel Khan gained an early lead against the Indian pair of Ahustosh Singh-Vivek Shokeen by winning the doubles contest on the opening day of the second leg of PSO Pakistan-India Series at the tennis courts of PTF complex on Thursday.

In the first set, both the pairs displayed high quality tennis and the scores went up to 5-5 at one stage. However, Aisam and Aqeel broke the service of Vivek Shokeen at 30–40 and build up the winning lead 6-5 to eventually win the first set 7-5.

In the second set, the Pakistani pair took a 3-1 lead by breaking Shokeen’s third game in the second set. At that stage it appeared that Pakistan will cruise to victory but the Indian pair fought back bravely and displayed excellent game on the net to level the scores at 4-4 by breaking Aqeel’s eighth game in the second set.

The Indians got the set point at 30-40 on the service of Aqeel in the 12th game of the second set but Aqeel made two excellent serves to win the game and level the score 6-6.

The set was decided on the tie-break which was won by Pakistan at 7-3 due to some superb tennis from Aisam.

By winning the doubles, the home side has taken a 1-0 lead in the 2nd leg of Pakistan-India series.

Both the singles matches will be played on Friday. The first singles match will be played between Aqeel of Pakistan and Vivek of India at 10.00am while the second singles contest will be played between Aisam and Ahustosh of India.—Agencies