Nikita lone upset

All the other seeds have entered the last eight stage with Archana and Aarthi Venkatraman, Radhika Tulpule and Shalini Thakur winning their matches on the day.

Archana and Aarthi secured their quarter-final berths in the 5,000 event in contrasting styles, beating Marutha Devi and Nona Wagh 6-0, 6-0 and 6-2, 6-4, respectively.

Fourth-seeded Radhika Tulpule faced no difficulty in beating Deepa Chakravorty 6-0 6-2 to set up a meeting with Geeta Manohar while seventh seed Shalini Thakur quelled a late rally from Karishma Patel to win 6-1 7-5.

After winning the first set in just 22 minutes, Shalini took a 2-0 lead in the second set. But Karishma levelled at 2-2 and after getting a break in the seventh game, led 5-3. Shalini levelled at 5-5 before wresting the set 7-5.

The best match of the day was played between third seed Aarti Venkatraman and Nona Wagh. In the 79-minute contest, Wagh broke her rival in the third game of the first set, but Venkatraman then won five games on the trot to take the set 6-2.

In the second set, Venkatraman was ahead 4-2 before Wagh levelled at 4-4. After Venkatraman had won the ninth game, Wagh committed the final two of her 11 double faults in the match to lose the set and the tie.

In the doubles quarter-finals, Sheetal Gautam and Liza Pereira defeated Geeta Manohar and T Yamini 6-1, 6-3 while the pair of Shalini Thakur and Karishma Patel beat Rati Kumar and Nikita Bharadwaj 6-1, 6-2.

The quarter-final line-up: Archna Venkatraman vs Liza Periera; Arti Venkatraman vs Sheetal Gautam; Shalini Thakur vs Radhika Tulpule; Geeta Manohar vs Sonal Phadke.