Ankita, Sahaja in quarters of ITF Women’s Open

India’s Ankita Raina and Sahaja Yamplapalli registered straight-game wins to advance to the quarterfinals of the ITF Women’s Open here on Thursday.

Second seed Ankita beat an error-prone Zeel Desai 7-6(4) 6-3, while fifth seed Sahaja overcame stiff resistance from wild card entrant Riya Bhatia before beating her 7-6(8) 7-5 in the pre-quarterfinals.

Two other Indians who played the last 16 -- Rashmikaa Srivalli Bhamidipaty and Vaishnavi Adkar -- bowed out but not before staging a brilliant fight against their seeded opponents.

While Srivalli lost to seventh seed Jacqueline Cabaj Awad of Sweden 1-6 6-3 7-6(5), Vaishnavi’s was shown the door by top seed Dalila Jakupovic of Slovenia 6-7(1) 3-6.

Later, Riya joined hands with Michika Ozeki of Japan to upset the third seeded pair of Anastasia Gasanova and Ekaterina Yashina 6-4 6-4 to enter the doubles semifinals.

Ankita also made it to the last four along side her Kazakh partner Zhibek Kulambayeva,, beating the all-Japanese pair of Akiko Omae and Ikumi Yamazaki 7-5 7-6(9).

Ankita, currently India’s No.1 women’s player, broke Zeel’s serve early in the second game to wrest the initiative.

However, Zeel, usually a late starter, broke her back and levelled at 2-2.

The 31-year-old then won three games on the trot to take a commanding 5-2 lead before Zeel made a superb comeback on the back of some good looking shots and won the next four games to lead 6-5.

Serving for the set, Zeel committed two double faults to lose her serve, facilitating for a tie-break which her senior counterpart won after trailing 1-3 after four points.

Ankita began the second set in a similar fashion breaking her opponent’s serve in the very first game and kept the advantage as both the opponents held their respective serves until the ninth game, which she broke to enter the last-eight round.

Sahaja did not expect such a fight from her unseeded opponent. After beginning with a break, Riya was all the more charged up and played some attacking tennis along both the flanks and maintained a slender 5-3 lead.