Saina shown door, Sridhar lone Indian in fray in Singapore Open

Singapore, June 9 (UNI) Saina Nehwal could not replicate her Philippines Open form and went down to seventh seeded Bulgarian Petya Nedeltcheva while Anup Sridhar, now the lone Indian hope, reached the men's singles quarterfinals in the 170,000 dollar Singapore Open Badminton Championship here.

Pitted against the seventh seed, it was never going to be easy for Saina and the Hyderabadi teenager found going tough against Nedeltcheva's compact game and went down 11-21, 16-21.

Winner of last month's Philippines Open, Saina tried everything in her repertoire but her Bulgarian opponent staved off a late challenge and carved out a straight game win in about half an hour.

In the third round of men's singles, world number 20 Chetan Anand fought a fierce battle with Saman Ismail for about 50 minutes but it was the Malaysian shuttler who had the last laugh following a 21-18, 11-21, 21-15 win that earned him a quaterfinal berth.

Anup Sridhar's comprehensive 21-9, 21-16 win against Andrew Smith finally brought some cheers back to the Indian camp.

National champion Anup was in command of the proceeding right from the beginning and it took him 35 minutes to tame the British shuttler.

Anup now runs into second seed Kenneth Jonassen in the quarterfinals and he could have to come up with something extraordinary to go past the Dane.

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