Defending champion and top seed BR Nikshep staved off a strong challenge from Mritunjay Badola to enter the boys' under-16 final of Fenesta National Junior Tennis Championship, here today.
Nikshep dug deep before prevailing 7-5 6-4 in one hour and 25 minutes at the DLTA complex here on Friday.
In the final on Saturday, Nikshep will face second seed Vasisht V. Cheruku, who too had a testing time against S. Manish before winning 7-6(3), 6-2.
In the girls under-16 singles semi-finals, however there was an upset with Ramya Natrajan showing the door to top seed Jennifer Luikham with a 6-3, 6-1 scoreline.
In contrast, second seed Zeel Desai faced no such resistance and sailed through comfortably, blanking Shivani Ingle 6-0, 6-0. Ramya and Zeel will now battle out in the final tomorrow.
The boys' under-14 final will be played between Siddhant Banthia and Digvijay Singh. Top seed Banthia showed good form to see off Nikit M. Reddy 6-1, 6-1 while Digvijay got the better of Saurav Kalkal 6-1, 6-0
The other upset of the day was in girls' under-14 category where top seed Prinkle Singh crashed out in the semi-finals, losing 6-7(5), 0-6 to Sabhyata Nihalani.
In the other semi-final, Sathwika Sama defeated Arja Chakraborty in a tough three-setter. Sathwika lost the first set in the tie-breaker but then fought back to prevail in the next two sets.
The doubles title in the boys' under-16 category was won by Vashisht V. Cheruku and Nitin K. Sinha. The duo however faced a stiff challenge from Yugal Bansal and Arman Bhatia but managed to win 2-6, 6-4, 10-8.
The girls under 16 doubles crown went to Zeel Desai and Jennifer Luikham who defeated Akshara Iska and Ramya Natrajan 3-6, 6-3, 10-5.
