Sipaeya sets up semi-final clash with Amritraj

The quarter-final clash between two left-handers 8212; former national champion Sunil Kumar Sipaeya and Sanam Singh 8212; promised a lot, but ended up being a completely one-sided affair. In his previous match, Singh had disposed of Great Britain8217;s Robert Searle with panache, but today it took him 10 games before he could open his account.

His poor first-serve percentage was one of the reasons for his downfall, and Sipaeya appeared to have no worries as he toyed with his opponent, making him run around all corners of the court 8211; for a losing cause.

After a first set whitewash, the second threatened to follow an identical pattern. However, Singh managed to hold his serve in the fifth game, and broke Sipaeya in the very next, perhaps briefly allowing him hope of clawing back into the match. He won the next game, thus recovering from 0-4 to 3-4, but this effort turned out to be too little, too late.

Fourth-seeded Sipaeya broke Singh while he was serving to stay in the match, and this 6-0, 6-3 win booked him a semi-final berth against fifth seed Prakash Amritraj.

Prakash kept his bid for a hat-trick of titles alive as he defeated Chinese Taipei8217;s Hsin-han Lee 6-4, 6-2. In another quarter final, top seed Karan Rastogi again looked off-colour as he lost his way midway through his match against eighth seed Navdeep Singh, and had to work hard to eke out a 6-2, 1-6, 6-4 win.

Results

Singles: Karan Rastogi bt Navdeep Singh 6-2, 1-6, 6-4; Prakash Amritraj bt Hsin-han Lee TPE 6-4, 6-2; Suni Kumar Sipaeya bt Sanam Singh 6-0, 6-3; Vishnu Vardhan bt Vinod Sridhar 6-3, 3-4 retd.

Doubles: Tushar Liberhan/ Sanam Singh bt Vijay Kannan/Vinod Sridhar 6-2, 6-2; Hsin-han Lee/Tsung-hua Yang TPE bt Ashutosh Singh/Sunil Kumar Sipaeya 6-3, 6-3.

Bhupathi-Stepanek out

New Delhi: Mahesh Bhupathi and Radek Stepanek8217;s campaign in the Artois Championship was cut short in the second round by third seeds Paul Hanley and Kevin Ullyet, who beat the Indo-Czech duo in the euro 680,250 ATP event. Bhupathi and Stepanek went down 1-6, 4-6. Earlier, Rohan Bopanna lost 3-6, 4-6 to Gilles Muller of Luxembourg in the second qualifying round. 8212;PTI