PTI

Bucharest, Sep 20: India's hopes to qualify for the World Group of Davis Cup were dealt a severe blow as Prakash Amritraj and Somdev Devvarman were blown away in the two singles rubbers on the opening day of the World Group play-off against Romania on Friday.

Somdev, rookie teenager on the ATP circuit, was overpowered by Victor Hanescu 6-3, 6-1, 6-0 while Prakash lost 5-7, 7-5, 2-6, 2-6 to Victor Crivoi, giving the hosts a 2-0 lead.

India now find themselves in do-or-die situation as they must win all three remaining matches of the clay court tie to make the cut for the World Group for the first time since 1998.

Experienced duo of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi must win Saturday's doubles rubber, if India hoped for upsets on Sunday when reverse singles will be played.

When Prakash lost the first match, all the responsibility to bring India back fell on the tender shoulders of Somdev, who had little idea of what was is in store for him.

Hanescu, world number 67, was so dominating with his strong service game that Somdev could win just one point in the first set on his opponent's serve.

And even that point Somdev won when Hanescu erred on a volley point.

Hansecue was too hot for a player like Somdev, who was playing only his second Davis Cup match. The Romanian gave a tough lesson to the young Indian player as he made him run all corners of the court, scoring points at will.

Somdev, who created waves on the circuit with his recent stupendous run, appeared as a hapless child against Hanescu who broke the Indian once in the first set, twice in the second and thrice in the third set to win quite easily.

The Indian saved a breakpoint in the fourth game in the first set with a very long rally in which he pinned the Romanian to the left of the court to set and convert the crucial point.

However, Hanescu showed who was superior as he made inroads quite intelligently, earning two breakpoints in the eighth game and converted second to draw first blood.

There was no scope for even a marginal error and it needed depth in ground strokes to tame an opponent like Hansecue, who did not show any mercy against the Indian lad.

Earlier, an error prone Prakash Amritraj went down in the first singles rubber against Victor Crivoi to leave India trailing 0-1.

In the match between number one singles player of India and second best of the hosts, Prakash put up a brilliant fight in the first two sets but ran out of steam as the game progressed in the clay court tie, which he lost.

Up against a player, placed 64 rungs above him in the ATP ranking charts, Prakash was all fired up in the second set as he overpowered the Romanian to fight his way back in the match but failed to maintain the intensity.

Once he dropped his serve in the fifth game of the third set, when an engrossing battle was on, Prakash looked out of sorts as he struggled to curb the growing unforced errors.

In the end, Prakash, playing on his least favoured pitch, lacked mental toughness required on physically demanding clay courts.

After going down 5-7 in the opening set, Prakash made a remarkable comeback to win the second and leveled the scores despite going down 2-4 after suffering an early break.

The numero uno player of India unleashed solid ground strokes, pinning his opponent to the baseline and played an aggressive net game to earn points.

Prakash broke Crivoi in the 10th game as his big strokes left the Romanian gasping and the Indian cashed in on the second breakpoint when he hit an overhead smash to make it 5-5.

With his attacking game, Prakash once again forced the hosts' number two player make unforced errors and broke him for the second time in the set in the 12th game to stay afloat in the match.

The first four games went with serves in the third set before a series of unforced errors saw the Indian dropping his serve in the fifth game and thus handing advantage to his opponent.

A good fight looked on the card, but Prakash surprisingly lower the guard and lost four straight games to hand the set to the Romanian.

Crivoi produced some stunning cross-court winners and service return winners to double break Prakash and went up 5-2 and had no problem in holding his own serve in the eighth game to close the set 6-2 in his favour.

The hosts' player broke Prakash, who had lost it in his mind, twice in the fourth set dashing all Indian hopes of a comeback and ran away with the set and match to give his country 1-0 lead.