Title favourite Banthia enters quarters

Top seed Siddanth Banthia reached the boys singles quarter-finals even as four other seeds fell by the wayside in the 10th MSLTA-Yonex Sunrise Ramesh Desai U16 junior national tennis tournament here today.
Maharashtra boy Banthia drubbed his Gujarat opponent Kevin Mrugesh Patel 6-2 6-1 to enter the last eight.
Second seed Megh Patel of Gujarat was level with 14th seed Ashutosh Tiwari of Uttar Pradesh at one-set all when he conceded the pre-quarter final tie.
Another seeded casualty was no.10 Rishabh Sharda who was beaten 7-6(3) 6-2 by Sanket Tomar of Chandigarh.
Gujarat's 14-year-old Dev Javia, set to represent the country at the "Road to Wimbledon" this year in the boys' section, ended the winning run of Arjun Honnappa of Karnataka, winning 6-7(5) 7-5 7-5 in a match lasting over 3 hours.

Tamil Nadu's S M Aditya, Karan Srivastava (Maharashtra), Abhimanyu Vannemreddy (Telangana) and Sacchitt Sharrma (Delhi) were the others to make the last eight stage in boys' singles.

In girls' singles, top seed Sama Sathwika of Telangana got past Kritika Chhabra of Maharashtra 6-4 6-2 to make the last eight stage.
Ninth seed Prinkle Singh of J and K upset sixth seed Akanksha A Bhan of Gujarat 6-1 6-4 while no. 11 Dedeepya Sai of Telangana ousted no.5 Humera Shaikh of Andhra Pradesh 6-3 6-4.
Local player Salsa Aher, seeded 16th, was the lone girl from the host state to make it to the last eight, when she stopped the run of giant-killer Syeda Shajiha Beg of Andhra Pradesh 6-3 6-3.

Fourth seed Shivani Amineni overcame a fighting Shivani Sravya 4-6 6-4 6-2 in an all-Telangana match and was joined in the quarters by no. 7 seed Tanisha Kashyap of Assam, Shreya Gulia of Delhi and Vaidehi Chaudhari of Gujarat.