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Indian shuttlers continue to make merry at the Yonex Belgian International 2018 as both Rituparna Das and Subhankar Dey beat higher-ranked players to make it to the semi-finals of this International Challenger tournament in Leuven, Belgium on Friday.
Former Indian national women’s singles champion Das, especially, has been highly impressive this week. Having had to battle a series of injuries at the beginning of the year, the Haldia-born Pullela Gopichand Academy product has been working her way back to the top echelons of the sport.
Currently perched at 103 in the world rankings, Das has accounted for a couple of seeded players to enter the last-four stage of this tournament. She knocked out the seventh seed Fabienne Deprez 21-13, 21-15 in the second round and then followed it up with a 21-7, 21-15 win over the second seed and World No. 43 Rachel Honderich 21-7, 21-15.
In the semi-finals, Das will take on the fifth seed Soraya De Visch Eijbergen of the Netherlands.
Fifth seed Subhankar Dey too has been doing well at this tournament. The 64th ranked Indian prevailed over the fourth seed and World No. 56 Vladimir Malkov 18-21, 21-18, 21-14 in a quarter-final battle that lasted 1 hour 13 minutes.
He is up against the seventh seed and World No. 62 Victor Svendsen of Denmark for a place in the final.
Gurusaidutt bows out of South Australia International
At the South Australia International -- another International Challenger event going on in Adelaide, Australia -- fifth seed RMV Gurusaidutt went down fighting 9-21, 25-27 to Japan’s Hashiru Shimono in the pre-quarter-finals.
The 2014 Commonwealth Games bronze medallist had come to this tournament on the back of a semi-final finish at the Hyderabad Open last week.
In mixed doubles, two Indian pairs reached the quarter-finals. Second seeds Saurabh Sharma and Anoushka Parikh defeated Ashwant Gobinathan and Lauren Lim 21-13, 21-10 while the duo of Utkarsh Arora and Karishma Wadkar got a walkover into the last-eight.
