Seeded Sinha reaches quarters of squash championship

Mumbai: Seeded Maharashtra player Abhihav Sinha reached the men's open quarter-finals of the 38th Bombay Gymkhana Maharashtra State Open Senior Squash Championship here today after scoring back to back straight-game wins in the previous two rounds.

Sinha, seeded 5/8, got the better of state rival Sumeet Yadav in round three and then got past Abhishek Agarwal, also from the host state, with a hard-fought 11-9 11-8 11-9 scoreline to enter the last eight stage.

Young Shanay Sanghavi, from hosts Bombay Gymkhana, went down fighting in the second round against professional Ganesh Kadam. He lost 9-11 9-11 11-9 10-12. Shah siblings Abhimanyu and Chaitanya, also of Bombay Gymkhana, scored impressive wins to make the pre-quarters. While Abhimanyu had an easy outing, Chaitanya rallied after losing a tight opening set to prevail over Harshvardhan Wadhwa of suburban Otters Club 9-11 11-3 11-3 11-7.

Jindal Academy players Shashi Pandey, Laxman Joshi and Aishwarya Singh also sailed into the pre-quarter-finals. Vijay Jangra of Mayo College, Ajmer, Manish Chavan, Baban More, Sachin Jadhav and Sanjay Pawar were the significant winners who entered the Professionals' quarter- finals. West Bengal's Sourav Ghosal, India's highest world ranked (15) player, is the no. 1 seed in the tournament who is drawn to meet second seed Harinder Pal Sandhu (world no. 80) of Tamil Nadu in the final.

Maharashtra's Aditya Jagtap and Tamil Nadu's Ravi Dixit are seeded 3/4 in the open event. In the women's competition former India no. 1 Joshna Chinappa (world no. 26) of Tamil Nadu is the no. 1 seed followed by Urwashi Joshi of Maharashtra.

Results: Men's open (3rnd round): Abhinav Sinha bt Sumeet Yadav 11-5 11-3 11-2; Abhimanyu Shah bt Aditya Maheshwari 11-5 11-7 11-3; Shashi Pandey bt Aditya Nahata 11-4 11-5 11-8; Chaitanya Shah bt Harshvardhan Wadhwa 9-11 11-3 11-3 11-7; Laxman Joshi bt Karan Mirchandani 13-11 11-8 5-11 11-6; Riyan Bhatia bt Urmil Sodha 11-5 13-11 11-3; Devchand Rai bt Varun Kumar 11-4 1-11 11-1 11-6; Aishwarya Singh bt Arpit Rao 11-1 11-4 11-3; Abhishek Agarwal bt Pramod Kumar 11-3 11-6 11-5.