Hyderabad Open | Sourabh Verma and Ashwini Ponnappa-N Sikki Reddy defeat compatriots to advance to semi finals
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Sourabh Verma registered a comfortable victory against Ajay Jayaram in the men’s singles to reach the semis of the ongoing Hyderabad Open. Meanwhile, the top-seeded pair of Ashwini Ponnappa and Sikki Reddy took down the eighth seeds in their quarter-final match and entered the top four.
Players from the home country had a mixed day at the Super 100 event currently underway in Hyderabad with various players getting eliminated while some managed to advance to the top four stage in their respective categories on Friday.
The number one seeds Ashwini Ponnappa and N SIkki Reddy had it easy against the other Indian pair of Meghana Jakkampudi and Poorvisha Ram, defeating the eighth seeds in straight games. Their 21-16, 21-15 win helped them set up an exciting semi-final encounter against the duo of Ka Yan Fan and Yi Ting Wu from Hong Kong.
In the men’s doubles, two Indian pairs were eliminated from the tournament in the quarter-finals. Manu Attri and Sumeeth Reddy put up a good fight against the South Korean pair Sung Seung Na and Chang Wang, but the second seeds ultimately lost the battle 21-19, 11-21, 17-21. Compatriots MR Arjun and Shlok Ramachandran couldn’t weather out the storm either, going down rather easily to the fourth-seeded Chinese Taipei pairing of Jhe-Huei Lee and Po-Hsuan Yang, 21-19, 21-9.
Meanwhile, in the men’s singles, Singapore’s Kean Yew Loh pulled off an upset to knockout Indian Subhankar Dey in straight games, even though he was seeded fifth for the tournament. This meant that Sourabh Verma’s dominating victory over Ajay Jayaram made him the only player from the host country to proceed in the semifinals from either of the male’s singles or female’s singles categories. The unseeded Jayaram was no match for the seventh seed’s prowess, as he went down easy to Verma 21-18, 21-9.
The win helped Verma set up an enticing semi-final clash against Malaysia’s Iskander Zulkarnian scheduled to take place on Saturday.
