Nishant Dabas lifts maiden singles trophy at ITF J2 in Egypt

By Saurabh Singh | AITA

India’s fourth-ranked junior in the U-18 AITA rankings, Nishant Dabas has won his maiden ITF singles trophy after beating Moroccan junior Walid Ahouda 6-0, 6-4 at the J2 event held this week at Cairo, Egypt.

With this win, 17-year-old Dabas added silverware number four from the ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors calendar in 2021.

Before this win, Dabas had won three doubles titles in India at Chandigarh (with Chirag Duhan), Gurugram (with Aman Dahiya) and New Delhi (with Aman Dahiya) – all J4 events.

En route to his maiden ITF Junior singles title, Dabas cruised past his opponents with straight-set wins in all matches but the semi-finals where Russia’s Ilia Simakin stretched the Indian junior to three sets with Dabas winning 6-3, 3-6, 7-6.

In his opening round, Dabas sent Polish player Marcel Kamrowski packing 6-2, 6-1. Up next, he dashed the hopes of homeboy Amned Zaki 6-4, 6-0.

USA’s Cooper Williams tried to pose a challenge to AITA-SAI’s High-Performance Camp trainee Dabas in their quarter-finals battle but the Delhi lad prevailed 6-3, 6-4.

Dabas has played three more Junior ITF events in Cairo in the preceding weeks. His best result on this Egyptian tour before the Singles win was a quarter-finals appearance at J3 Cairo held from 16-20 August.

Dabas has an overall 26-8 win-loss ratio on the ITF Junior Tour in 2021 while his Junior career stats read as 61-31.