In the longest match of the tournament, which lasted 218 minutes, Shivika prevailed 7-5, 6-7 (6-8),7-6 (7-1). In the second set, Shivika came back from 1-4 down to take a 6-5 lead. Serving for the match, she squandered five match points. In the tie-break, she had a 6-0 lead but failed to take one point. Shweta took eight points in a row to take the second set.

In the third set, Shivika had a lead of 4-0. Hard-hitting Shweta took the next four games to equalise. In the tie-break this time, Shivika did not make a mistake and won it 7-1.

Shruti Dhawan Sharma continued with her fine run and beat Tamil Nadu’s Shahin Ansari 6-2, 6-1. She is in the semis now. The other semi-finalists are sixth seed Nila PA Sindhu of Tamil Nadu and second seed Treta Bhattacharyya of West Bengal. Treta made short work of Deepna Vazirani, the eighth seed from Maharashtra, 6-1, 6-3.

Chandril Sood of UP defeated fourth seed Prateek Bhambri of Delhi in 6-4, 6-7 (4-7), 6-1. Top seed PC Vignesh of Andhra Pradesh reached the quarter-finals of the men’s singles defeating local boy Harsh Vardhan Thirani 6-4, 6-4. Third seed N Vijay Sundar Prashanth of Tamil Nadu had to work hard against state-mate Nihal Kapoor to win 6-2, 4-6, 6-3. Seventh seed Mithun Murali of Tamil Nadu hardly broke any sweat to beat Saurav Panja of Bengal. Fifth seed Saurav Sukul was the lone Bengal man to enter the quarter-finals. He beat Manoj Kumar Sewa of Bengal 0-6, 7-6 (7-3), 6-1.

Today’s results: Men’s singles pre quarter-finals: PC Vignesh (1) (AP) (15) beat Harshvardhan Thirani (WB) (58) 6-4, 6-4; Saurav Sukul (5) (WB) (29) beat Manoj Kumar Sewa (Q) (WB) (66) 0-6, 7-6 (7-3), 6-1; N Vijay Sudar Prashanth (3) (TN) (21) beat Nihal Kapoor (TN) (47) 6-2, 4-6, 6-3; Aditya Madkekar (8) (Mah) (33) beat Ajai Selvaraj (TN) (63) 6-3, 6-4; Yogesh Phogat (Har) (44) Narendran Ranganathan (Q) (Services) (78) 6-4, 6-4; Chandril Sood (UP) (41) beat Prateek Bhambri (4) (Dl) (28) 6-4, 6-7 (4-7), 6-1; Mithun Murali (7) (TN) (32) beat Saurav Panja (WC) (WB) (114) 6-2, 6-1; Yannick Nelord (2) (Dl) (19) beat Bharat Bhardwaj (Har) (52) 6-3, 3-0 (Conc.).