Vaidya stuns Kiran Kumar

Tuesday, December 09 1997

Vaidya stuns Kiran Kumar

PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

CALCUTTA, Dec 8: Unfancied Mitesh Hazarnis of Assam and Arup Vaidya of Railways pulled off upset victories over eighth seed S Thomas of Kerala and fifth ranked Kiran Kumar of Air-India respectively to sail into the boys' singles quarter-final of the 22nd Junior National Badminton Championships at the Netaji Indoor Stadium here today.

Hazarnis blanked Thomas in straight games 18-15, 15-8, while Vaidya came from behind to down Kiran Kumar 7-15, 15-2, 15-7 in a keenly contested match.In the girls' singles, an indisposed fifth seed Glory Xavier failed to take the court against Maithali Gandhe of Air-India, who moved into the last eight.

Top seed Divya Ramesh of Air-India and her teammate and second seed D Shweta, however, did justice to their reputation carving out easy victories over their opponents. While Divya had little difficulty in humbling Palkan Nagori of Gujarat 11-4, 11-2, Shweta tamed D Suma of Kerala 11-8, 11-7 to reach the quarter-final.

Title contender and second seed in the boys' singles, Sachin Ratti continued his winning run breezing out Abhishek of Karnataka 15-0, 15-0.

Fourth seed Nikhil Kanetkar of Air-India had an easy 15-0, 15-4 victory over Harish Chandra of Railways, but his teammate and seventh seed B Chetan Anand had to sweat it out before upstaging Utsav Mishra of Uttar Pradesh 15-2, 16-18, 15-2.

Seventh seed Ketki Thakkar of Air-India also bit the dust against Railways' B R Minakshi in the after a hard-fought battle 11-5, 4-11, 6-11, but third seed C H Dipti, representing Railways, had little difficulty in overcoming a feeble challenge from Amrita Banerjee of Badminton Association of India 11-8, 11-4.

Neha Ganguly of Maharashtra, seeded eighth, overcame a spirited challenge from Pooja Patil of Karnataka in the opening game to register a 12-10, 11-4 on way to the quarter-final.

Parul Priyadarshini of Uttar Pradesh, who upset fifth seed M Radhika in the earlier round, also moved into the last eight getting past Mugdha Bhagwat of Maharashtra 7-11, 11-4, 11-6.