Sanave-Rupesh advance in quarters, Bhat crashes out

Kuching, June 16 (UNI) Thomas Sanave and Rupesh Kumar kept the tri-colour flying in men's doubles after the Indian challenge in the singles event came to a crashing end with Arvind Bhat's straight-game defeat in the men's pre-quarterfinals at the Malaysian Open Badminton Tournament here.

The Thomas-Rupesh duo played a compact game to down the Malaysian pair of Ying Jin Goh and Mohd Razif Abdul Rahman 21-17,21-19 to reach the quarterfinals.

To reach the last four stage, the Indian duo will have to overcome another Malaysian pair -- Woon Fui Lin and Mohd Fairuzizuan Tazari in the quarterfinals.

Meanwhile, it was all over for the Indians in the singles event.

Arvind Bhat, the lone Indian left in the men's singles event, suffered a straight-game defeat at the hands of German shuttler Roman Spitko to crash out of the event.

Spitko never allowed Bhat any leeway and carved out an easy 21-14, 21-17 win to breeze into the quarterfinals where he takes on Korean Hyun II Lee who downed Wei Ng of Hong Kong in another pre-quarterfinal.

Bhat's team mates Anup Sridhar, Chetan Anand and Rohan Castelino had earlier lost their second round games.

In the women singles too, Saina Nehwal could not live upto the expectations and the winner of the Philippines Open threw away a good start to go down to her Dutch rival Jie Yao in the first round.

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