Parupalli Kashyap and Sameer Verma posted contrasting wins in their third round encounters on Thursday to set up an All-Indian quarter-final in the US Grand Prix Gold badminton tournament in Anaheim.
Kashyap, who had upset top seed Lee Hyun Il in the opening round, got the better of 16th seeded Sri Lankan Nikula Karunaratne, 21-19, 21-10 in the pre-quarterfinal while fifth seed Verma rallied to defeat ninth seeded Brazilian Ygor Coelho 18-21, 21-14, 21-18.
Second seed H S Prannoy also reached the last eight with a 21-18, 14-21, 21-16 win over 12th seeded Dutchman Mark Caljouw. He will now face eighth seeded Japanese Kanta Tsuneyama for a semi-final berth.
Earlier in the day, Kashyap had little trouble in his second round against Gergely Krausz when the Hungarian retired in the second game after trailing 21-16, 17-6.
Verma needed three games to clear the second round hurdle against Croatian Zvonimir Durkinjak as he wasted one match point in the second game before prevailing 21-19, 25-27, 21-15.
In the men’s doubles event, Manu Atri and B Sumeeth Reddy needed just 22 minutes to defeat Indonesia’s Androw Yunanto and Hendra Tandjaya 21-16, 21-9 and will now take on Japanese seventh seed Hiroki Okamura and Masayuki Onodera in the quarters.
Indian challenge in the women’s section came to an end on the second day of the competition after Rituparna Das and Sri Krishna Priya lost their respective second round matches in straight games.