Rishi Sridhar’s dream run continues; Panja bows out

Joining Shridhar in the round of eight on Wednesday were fourth seed Harsh Mankad, sixth seed Sandeep Kirtane and seventh seed Vinod Shridhar.

The Shridhar-Leysek match lasted two hours and 21 minutes. The first set saw the rival trade early break to go level-pegging till the 10th game. Shridhar got the decisive break in the 11th to lead 6-5 up and then held serve to win the set.

Leysek recovered strongly in the second set, breaking in the second and sixth games to lead 5-1 and fired two aces in the seventh to clinch the set.

Shridhar threw in the towel in the latter stages of this set with the idea of conserving his energies for the decider.

However, it was the Slovak who continued to hold an upperhand in the decider, in which he broke Shridhar in the fifth. But Shridhar restored the parity at 4-4 and then broke Leysek again in the 10th to win the set and match.

Wild card Saurav Panja fought admirably before bowing out to fifth seed Barry Fulcher (Great Britain) 2-6, 7-5, 4-6. After a surrendering in the first set, Panja went on the aggressive in the second. He hit winners with amazing power and rushed the net at every opportunity to surprise Fulcher. Both players hung on to their serves before Panja broke got the all-important break in the 11th.

In the final set, Fulcher broke Panja in the fourth game to go 4-1 up. Panja got a break back in the ninth but Fulcher hung on to his serve to make progress.

Mankad played well with Russian opponent Alexandre Sikanov in the first set to win at 6-4, but in the second set Russian simply gave up blaming the humid weather. Mankad accepted this gift and took the set 6-0.

All other seeded player had a smooth sailing.

Results (seedings in prefix):

Men’s singles (PQF): 1-Danai Udomchoke (Tha) bt Amod Wakalkar (Ind) 6-0 6-0, 2-Per Thornadtsson (Swe) bt Manoj Mahadevan (Ind) 6-2 6-4, 4-Harsh Mankad (Ind) bt Alexandre Sikanov (Rus) 6-4 6-0, 5-Barry Fulcher (GB) bt Saurav Panja (Ind) 6-2 5-7 6-4, 6-Sandeep Kirtane (Ind) bt Gwenael Gueit (Fra) 3-6 6-3 6-0, 7-Vinod Sridhar (Ind) bt John Rom (USA) 6-3 2-6 6-1, 8-Kunj Majmudar (US) bt Kedar Shah (Ind) 6-4, 6-1

Doubles (QF): 1-Sandeep Kirtane/ Saurav Panja (Ind) bt Patril Stalbark/ Per Thornadtsson (Swe) 2-6 6-3 6-2, 2-Mustafa Ghouse/ Vishal Uppal (Ind) bt Mithun Murali/ Mukundan Nandakumar (Ind) 6-3 7-6 (8-6), Vikrant Chadha (Ind)/ Kunj Mujmudar (US) bt Harsh Mankad/ Ajay Ramaswamy (Ind) 7-6 (7-1) 6-3, Alexey Gavirlov/ Alexandre Sikanov (Rus) bt Danai Udomchoke/ Pracharpol Khamsamarn (Tha) 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (7-4).