Hi, this is Mary and Bartori. I'm Matt's Belander. This is Mary Carillo. I'm San Roenka. I'm Layton Hutt.

This is Yannick Noah and you're listening to the tennis podcast.

Well the semi-finals have been set for the Billie Jean King Cup finals and an indication of the sort of day that was being had

by Matt Roberts in Prague was the fact that he was pictured holding multi-colored popcorn ahead of the final match of the day.

Does that tell its own story, Matt? It does, yes. It was exactly what a deciding double was called for. I felt.

I queued up for it along with some other people and when I got to the front I was surprised that it was multi-colored.

I never had multi-colored popcorn before. I could have had an ordinary but that was salty and I fancied sweet.

But I'm pleased to report just as nice as standard popcorn and yeah it was exactly the type of night and moment that you hope this event will create.

I think I've actually stayed on site to record tonight rather than go back to the hotel just to try and capture some of that energy.

When you go back to the hotel and you crash a little bit but here the adrenaline keeps you going and there's been a lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm here tonight even though spoiler it ended in defeat for the hosts.

Yeah because you had a pretty full crowd in there for tonight's match there was a lot of energy. It seemed from the TV screen that I was watching here in the UK.

Now you're sitting in a cavernous media room. A few people dotted around behind you that I can see.

I know you've just been into the Victoria Express comments for Switzerland to beat Czech Republic 2-1.

It was another interesting match wasn't it? It got off to a good start for the Czech Republic in that they won that first rubber and yet they couldn't get themselves over the line.

Do you feel from what you saw today that that is more on Switzerland achieving or of the Czech Republic come up short really today based on their incredible record in this competition?

I think it's probably a little bit of both. I think Victoria Kuzmiv is going to have to see her title as MVP of this tournament because Blinder Bengschicch well and truly has that.

She was exceptional tonight. I thought she was brilliant against Germany and gave me a really good feeling about her this week and just even better tonight.

Winning the singles, backing it up in the doubles but on the other side. Yeah I think the fact is Kriczyk of her has lost both her singles matches here.

She was the Czech number one great things were expected of her. It's perhaps not surprising that she's lost. She's had a.

Extremely demanding year it's the end of the season. She's got another event around the corner. She's got a little bit of an injury.

It's a totally new experience for her to be the number one in this team as we've talked about.

So that's surprising and also the fact that she didn't then play the doubles. So they were weakened in that doubles.

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