Top seed Aakarshi Kashyap sailed into the semi-finals of the All India Junior Ranking Tournament in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, on Friday after comfortable wins in the third round and quarter-finals of the girls singles.
Boys singles top seed Aman Farogh Sanjay also reached the last four, but he faced a much harder time, playing three-game matches in the pre-quarters and the round of eight.
Kashyap, 16, beat 15th seed Tanishka Deshpande 21-8, 21-12 in the third round, before defeating seventh seed Nivetha M 21-18, 21-16. Kashyap was joined in the last four by 12th seed Dipty Kuity, and qualifiers Medha Shashidharan and Kavipriya S.
Kuity defeated third seed Malvika Bansod 21-12, 21-14 in the quarter-finals. Shashidharan got past fourth seed Amolika Singh 25-23, 21-16 in the third round, before coming back from a game down to beat fifth seed Unnati Bisht 15-21, 21-19, 21-12. Kavipriya got past fellow qualifier Smit Toshniwal 15-21, 21-16, 21-19, before beating sixth seed Ashwini Bhat K 21-10, 21-11.
In the boys singles, Aman Farogh Sanjay was stretched by qualifier Jaiditya Pratap Singh 19-21, 23-21, 21-14 in the third round and 16th seed Varun Trikha 17-21, 21-19, 21-15 in the quarters. Aman will take on qualifier Priyanshu Rajawat in the semi-finals. Rajawat beat third seed Dhruv Rawat 21-16, 18-21, 29-27 in a third-round match that lasted an hour. He then beat unseeded Amit Rathore 21-8, 22-20 in the quarters.
In the other boys singles semi-final, fifth seed Kiran George will take on fourth seed Orijit Chaliha. Kiran beat second seed Alap Mishra 21-17, 21-12 in the quarter-finals. Chaliha also hardly had any trouble beating sixth seed Jaswanth D 21-4, 21-19.