It was a cat and a cat game.

The cats howled and screamed at the centre court last night when Serena Williams and Elena Dementieva were involved in the slug fest to make it to the finals of Wimbledon Ladies. It was so intense that both players couldn’t stop grunting although a lady spectator pleaded sitting in the first row with her hat on that read “No Grunting Please”.

At the grandest of the stages, it was nothing short of a spectacle. The match was like watching a Quentin Tarantino movie. It was full of fast paced action, suspense thriller and burst of emotions in the best three sets of grueling ladies tennis match witnessed so far at SW19 in a long time. It sure will qualify easily to go down as one of the best ladies matches played ever.

Elena Dementieva pushed Serena Williams to the hilt. Stretched her from corner to corner, made her run from baseline to the net, asked her questions, make her earn her points in the match. Serena was not given any freebies as her previous opponents did in this year’s campaign. She surely had an easy run till she came up to meet the Olympic gold medalist last night.

Serena dropped her first set of the tournament and was seen vulnerable at times. She had to come up with something extra ordinary to save couple of match points against her in the third and she did come up with a winner in one of the most extra ordinary rallies we have seen in a long time. Serena won in the end proving experience is the ingredient required and not the exuberance.

That said, Elena proved how difficult she can be and made Serena look struggling till the end. If there was anything that separated both players, it was that rally which Serena won when it mattered in the third. That’s it. It was that close.

In the end, when Serena won the semis 6-7, 7-5, 8-6 to set up a date with her sibling yet again in the finals, Elena walked away winning more friends, supporters and admirers world over.

I don’t know whether Elena won a supporter in Vijay Amritraj as he was throughout the match, kept cheering the Williams; both the Williams on court as well as those Williams in the box often coughing away on the microphone under the influence of anti-histamine scaring his colleague Alan Wilkins.

But Elena did win yours truly with a magnificent display of tennis shots throughout the match.