Sridhar bows out, doubles teams flourish in Australian GP

Melbourne: Anup Sridhar bowed out of the men’s singles quarter-finals in the Australian Open Grand Prix even as the Indian men’s and women’s doubles teams made it to the last-four stage on Friday.The sixth-seeded Sridhar went down 17-21, 18-21 to top-seed Yan Kit Chan of Hong Kong in the quarter-final. He was followed by unseeded Aditya Prakash, who lost 13-21, 9-21 to Indonesia’s Alamsyah Yunus in another last-eight encounter. Also bowing out in the women’s singles quarter-final was fifth-seed Neha Pandit, who lost 21-18, 8-21, 4-21 to fourth-seed Anita Raj Kaur of Malaysia. However, India assured themselves a place in the men’s doubles final as top-seeds Rupesh Kumar and Sanave Thomas will meet fourth-seeds Tarun Kona and Arun Vishnu in the first semi-final while the other last-four clash will see Indian third-seeds Akshay Dewalkar and Jishnu Sanyal clashing with second-seeds Teik Chai Gan and Bin Shen Tan of Malaysia. The Indian women’s doubles pairs of Aparna Balan and Shruti Kurian made it to the semi-final, while compatriots Anjali Kalita and Jyotshna Polavarapu also qualified for the final-four. Aparna and Shruti will meet New Zealand top-seed Danielle Barry and Donna Haliday in the first semi-final, while in the second, Anjali and Jyotshna will meet Chia Chi Huang and He Tian Tang of Australia. Bureau Report