Seeded shuttlers make it to quarterfinals in style

LUCKNOW: Seeded players marched into the mixed doubles quarterfinals of the All-India senior doubles ranking badminton tournament here on Friday, notching up contrasting wins, at the UP Badminton Academy here.

Third seeded duo of S Sujeeth and Anga Anto defeated Rajesh Verma and Karma Meena 21-16, 21-11 to make it to the quarterfinals. Fifth seed Enke and R Panda ousted Saurabh Keharkar and Ritika Thakore 21-13, 2119, Gaus Sheikh and Arundhati Patwane beat Himanshu Kedia and Kirti Prasad 21-5, 21-10 in other pre-quarterfinal matches.

Fourth seed pair of Utkarsh Arora and Karishma Wadekar brushed aside Shubham Yadav and Pinki Karki 21-19, 21-8, whereas unseeded Siddarth Gurkha and Riya Gajjar shocked seventh seed Siddarth and Manali Sinha 21-19, 11-21, 21-15 in a thriller to make it to the last eight grade.

HASAN SHINES

Hasan Akhtar took four wickets as Cricket Association Lucknow trounced HSCA, Delhi by seven wickets in a match of the 24th All India Shubhash Memorial cricket tournament, at the NCL Bina stadium in Sonbhadra on Friday.

BRIEF SCORES

HSCA 144 in 36.5 overs

(Siddhant Purohit 49, Apoorva Walia 37, Hasan Akhtar 4 for 23, Kritagya Singh 2 for 21, Priyanshu Anand 2 for 30) lost to CAL 147 for 3 in 29.3 overs (Vishwajeet Mishra 55, Rahul Rawat 45, Prabhnoor Singh 25, Apoorva Walia 2 for 29).

FINE BOWLING

Rakesh Mishra (4/12) and G Goswami (4/17) bowled well as North Central Railway defeated MCF by 10 wickets in a league match of the 63rd All-India Inter Railway cricket tournament, at the KD Singh ‘Babu’ stadium here on Friday. In other matches of the day, ECR Hazipur defeated RDSO Lucknow by nine wickets, whereas SECR Bilaspur beat WCR Jabalpur by three wickets.