Kanetkar had no trouble clipping the wings of Thane youngster Nimish Goyal, who had caused a minor upset by defeating third seed Vikrant Patwardhan 15-8, 15-7 in the quarter-final. Kanetkar won 15-3, 15-10, and will meet fellow member of the silver-medal winning Commonwealth Games team, Vincent Lobo, in the final.

Lobo, a quarter-final loser to India's top player Gopi Chand at the Nationals last year, downed Sanket Shetty 15-4, 15-6 in the other semi-final. Lobo has struck a purple patch this year after he switched from singles to doubles, a move that pushed him and partner Jaseel Ismail into the Indian squad. Lobo will became available for the state team this year, after he quit Railways.

The women's final will be contested by top seed Manjusha Kanwar and second seed Trupti Murgunde, both fromPune. Trupti, the state junior champion, had to wage a tough, three-game battle to down Archana Deodhar 11-5, 8-11, 13-10.

Results

(prefix denotes seeding)

Men singles (semis): 1-Nikhil Kanetkar (Pune) bt Nimish Goyal (Thane) 15-3 15-10; 4-Vincent Lobo (GM) bt Sanket Shetty (MS) 15-4 15-6(QF): 1-Nikhil Kanetkar (Pune) bt Alok Singh (MS) 15-3 15-5; 5-Nimish Goyal (Thane) bt Vikrant Patwardhan (GM) 15-8 15-7; 4-Vincent Lobo (GM) bt 6-Rutuparna Kulkarni (Aur) 15-4 15-2; 7-Sanket Shetty (GM) bt Sachin Sarda (Pune) 15-1 15-7.

Boys u-22 doubles (semis): Bhushan Paithankar/ Rohan Radhakrishnan bt Shantanu Nene/ Karan Modi 15-7 15-13; Sanket Shetty/ Kunal Vaswani bt Nimish Goyal/ Rutuparna Kulkarni 17-14 15-7.

Veteran singles (final): SA Rao (MS) bt HK Singh (MS) 15-13 15-12Women singles (semis): 1-Manjusha Kanwar (Pune) bt Meenakshi Wagh (MBA) 11-3 11-0; 2-Trupti Murgunde (Pune) bt Archana Deodhar (Pune) 11-5 8-11 13-10.Girls u-22 doubles (league): Gauri Narayan/ Anuj Wadke (MS) bt Neha Gangoli/Pooja Kohli (GM) 17-14 15-10

Mixed doubles under-22 (semis): Rohan Radhakrishnan/Kranti Sane bt Kunal Vaswani/Sim Sim Salaria 15-5 15-11; Shantanu Nene/Trupti Murgunde bt Harshad Tawade/Neha Gangoli 17-14 15-10.