India’s Siddhant Banthia and Bulgaria’s Alexander Donski captured the men’s doubles title at the Rwanda Challenger 2025 in Kigali on Saturday. The fourth-seeded duo secured their first ATP Challenger title together with a hard-fought 6-4, 5-7, 10-8 victory over France’s Geoffrey Blancaneaux and Czechia’s Zdenek Kolar, the third seeds.
For Banthia, 24, this win marked his maiden ATP Challenger title.
The final was closely contested. Both pairs held serve for the first eight games until Banthia and Donski made a breakthrough in the ninth, breaking their opponents and then serving out the opening set to love.
The second set followed a similar pattern, with Blancaneaux and Kolar breaking in the 12th game to push the match into a super tiebreaker. The deciding set saw Banthia and Donski take a 6-4 lead before their opponents surged ahead at 8-7. However, the Indian-Bulgarian team claimed the final three points to close out the match in one hour and 37 minutes.
Banthia and Donski hit seven aces and saved six of the seven breakpoints they faced.
In the semi-finals of the ATP Challenger 100 event, the duo defeated wildcards Alafia Ayeni (USA) and Luka Pavlovic (France) 6-4, 6-3, after overcoming unseeded opponents in the earlier rounds.
Meanwhile, India’s top-seeded Niki Poonacha and Zimbabwe’s Courtney John Lock suffered an early exit in the first round, falling to unseeded French pair Corentin Denolly and Clement Tabur.
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