Former national champions Sourabh Verma and Rituparna Das continued their impressive run as they progressed to the quarterfinals of the $75,000 Russia Open BWF Tour Super 100 tournament on Thursday.
Also making it to the final eight were Mithun Manjunath, Subhankar Dey and Vrushali Gummadi in singles, while the men’s doubles pair of Arun George and Sanyam Shukla and the two mixed doubles combination of Rohan Kapoor and Kuhoo Garg and Saurabh Sharma and Anoushka Parikh also entered the quarterfinals.
Coming back after recovering from an injury, Sourabh, who made the cut for the Asian Games after proving his worth at the selection tournaments, trounced Russia’s Sergey Sirant 21-11 21-9 in a lop-sided contest. The eighth seeded Indian will face Israel’s Misha Zilberman, seeded third.
Rituparna, who won the India International Series and Polish International in 2016, had to dig deep into her reservoir to eke out a 13-21 21-17 21-19 win over second seed Ying Ying Lee of Malaysia.
In doubles, Rohan and Kuhoo, who had won Iceland International and finished runners-up at the Lagos International last week, defeated local pair of Alexey Panov and Polina Makkoveeva 21-10 21-14. The duo will cross swords with local combo of Andrej Loginov and Liliia Abibulaeva at the Sport Hall Olympic on Friday.
Arun and Sanyam, who won the Dutch International this season, defeated Canada’s Jeffrey Lam and England’s Hin Shun Wong 21-12 21-13 in men’s doubles.
The mixed pair of Saurabh and Anoushka also notched up a 21-6 21-12 win over Russian combo of Artem Serpionov and Anastasiia Pustinskaia.
However, it was curtains for the seventh seeded Mugdha Agrey, as she lost to Iris Wang 4-21 13-21 in a one-sided women’s singles clash.
