Bengaluru, April 6 (IANS) Veteran tennis ace Leander Paes was on Thursday dropped from the Indian squad for the Asia/Oceania Davis Cup tie against Uzbekistan, which starts here on Friday.

Instead of Paes, Davis Cup non-playing skipper Mahesh Bhupathi gave Rohan Bopanna a chance to pair with Sriram Balaji for the doubles match against Uzbekistan.

Bhupati described the reason to choosing Rohan instead of Paes, “Yeah, like I said the conditions obviously are very quick here. Rohan is serving well… That was the basis of the decision,”

Bopanna and Balaji will face Farrukh Dustov and Sanjar Fayziev in the men’s doubles category.

Bhupati admitted that it was the tough decision for him to drop Paes. Bhupati said, “It was tough and that is why the last-minute decision. I was clear from the start that I wanted to go with three singles options only because the couple of boys have never played under Davis Cup stress situation, so going in with two (doubles) specialists was going to be a high-risk situation.”

Bhupati also added, “I think these boys have been here since Sunday, and we were able to play a lot of sets with Rohan and Bala. They played three sets everyday. Leander, unfortunately, came only yesterday and he played three games and it started raining. So, there wasn’t Davis Cup doubles highest stress situations.”

Ramkumar Ramanathan will now spearhead India’s singles challenge in place of Yuki Bhambri, who is suffering from a knee injury.

Ramanathan will face Temur Ismailov in the first singles rubber on Friday while Prajnesh Gunneswaran, who replaced Bhambri, will then take on Fayziev in the second singles rubber.

Earlier on March 28, Bhupathi selected four singles players in the squad for the Davis Cup tie against Uzbekistan, dropping Paes and his doubles partner Bopanna to the reserves.