Leeds-born Naiktha Bains enjoys the ‘fun’ of Wimbledon experience

Bains is part of the LTA’s Men’s & Women’s Programme, which provides a range of support to players aged 16-21 with potential to progress towards the Pro Scholarship Programme.

The Leeds-born 23-year-old, who emigrated to Australia aged 8 but started representing Britain in 2019, and Murray Sharan looked as if they were going to be beaten easily at a set and 5-1.

However, the two rallied late on but ultimately fell 6-3, 6-4 to Georgia’s Oksana Kalashnikova and Russia’s Varvara Gracheva in the final match of the day on Court 17.

“I thought we played well in the end when we were coming back from 5-1. I think that was the tennis we wanted to play. I do not think we played our best before then. It was just a bit too little, too late at the end, I guess. We still enjoyed it out there as always,” said Bains.

With their match taking place at the end of the day after several other courts, including Centre and Court 1, had finished for the day, the two received a great amount of support from fans.

“It’s always a pleasure to play at Wimbledon, in front of a home crowd,” said the world number 245.

“It was so much fun. There were still plenty of people so it did not feel like there was less to be honest. We were on an outside court but on the few stands there it was packed and there were people standing up around the outside. They were all getting behind us, especially when we were coming back in that second set. It was a lot of fun to be out there.”

“It definitely started with a few people and then gradually as the match went on more and more came and by the end, I think it was pretty much full.”

Murray Sharan added: “We obviously expected to be on late and then our court went on really slowly. At the start of the match there maybe was not as many but it picked up and I think maybe because there were not as many matches on, we ended up with quite a full crowd by the end.”

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