Vladivostock: Former national champions Sourabh Verma and Rituparna Das continued their impressive run as they progressed to the quarterfinals of the USD 75,000 Russia Open badminton tournament here, Thursday.
Also making it to the last eight stage were Mithun Manjunath, Subhankar Dey and Vrushali Gummadi in singles, the men’s doubles pair of Arun George and Sanyam Shukla and the two mixed doubles combination of Rohan Kapoor and Kuhoo Garg and Saurabh Sharma and Anoushka Parikh.
Coming back after recovering from an injury, Sourabh trounced Russia’s Sergey Sirant 21-11, 21-9 in a lop-sided contest. The eighth-seeded Indian will face Israel’s Misha Zilberman, seeded third.
Rituparna however had to dig deep into her reservoir to eke out a 13-21, 21-17, 21-19 win over second seed Ying Ying Lee of Malaysia. It could have gone any way, but Rituparna held her nerves to win the match. The 21-year-old from Haldia in West Bengal will square off against American qualifier Iris Wang next for a place in the semis.
Mithun defeated Japan’s Koji Naito 21-16, 21-13 to set up a meeting with Malaysia’s Satheishtharan Ramachandran while fifth-seeded Subhankar, who had won titles at Iceland and Portugal last year and registered a win at the KaBaL International this season, saw off compatriot Siddharth Singh 21-11, 21-19. The 25-year-old will meet second seed Russian Vladimir Malkov in the quarterfinals.
In another men’s singles match Gummadi dumped Korea’s Byeol Lim Lee 21-11, 21-13 in 24 minutes. The 20-year-old will meet Malaysia’s Yen Mei Ho.
In mixed doubles, Rohan and Kuhoo, defeated the local pair of Alexey Panov and Polina Makkoveeva 21-10, 21-14. The duo will cross swords with local combo of Andrej Loginov and Liliia Abibulaeva at the Sport Hall Olympic here. The mixed pair of Saurabh and Anoushka also notched up a 21-6, 21-12 win over locals Artem Serpionov and Anastasiia Pustinskaia.
In the men’s doubles encounter Arun and Sanyam defeated Canada’s Jeffrey Lam and England’s Hin Shun Wong 21-12, 21-13.
However, it was curtains for the seventh-seeded Mugdha Agrey, as she lost to Wang 4-21, 13-21 in a one-sided women’s singles clash.
