Upcoming Odisha tennis player Anaam Almas narrowly missed a berth in the main draw of the ITF Women’s $15,000 Tournament after losing to fellow Indian Abhilasa Mehra 5-7, 1-6 in qualifying final round at Arera Club in Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh) today.

Bhubaneswar lass Anaam fought well in the first set but could not sustain her fight in the second set. She said he lacked experience to fight at international level and needed to play a lot of matches to achieve success at this level.

Anaam reached the final round earlier yesterday, beating Adrija Biswas, another fellow Indian, 7-5, 3-6, 7-5 in her first round match that lasted almost two and half hours. Had Anaam won today, she would have become the first Odisha girl to enter to the main draw of an ITF women`s turnament.

According to Anaam’s coach Santosh Kumar Mallik, she had trained hard in recent days and was in good form with a string of wins at the national circuit. Her success included singles title in the Gurukul State Level Tournament at Mendhasal, near here and the doubles crown at the AITA 50K Womens in Raipur, Chhattisgarh.

Carrying her impressive form Anaam thrashed all the opponesnts she faced in the Womens Ínter-State Championship at Bhilai. She won 6-0, 6-3 against Gujurat, 6-0, 6-2 against Kerala and 6-4, 6-1 against Karnataka.