Indians shine in Brunei tennis

Indian juniors had mixed results at the Brunei Open Junior International Grade-3 tennis event, being played at Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei.

In the boys' singles, Rishi Behl, seeded 15th, moved into the pre-quarter-finals, defeating Hyung-Chan Lim of Korea 6-1, 6-2 in a third round match.

Rishi will meet fellow-Indian Nihal Advani in the next round. Nihal also moved into pre-quarter-finals, upseting fifth seed Anuwat Dalomom of Thailand 6-2, 6-3.

Ninth seed Saurabh Singh defeated Sunu Wahyu Trijati of Indonesia 6-0, 6-2 in the third round to also enter the pre-quarter-finals, where he will face seventh seed Tai-Wei Liu of Taiwan.

Amit Karunakaran went down to 10th seed Wang-Cheng Hsieh of Tiawan 2-6, 1-6 in the third round.

Three Indians who had earlier confirmed for the event withdrew at the last moment. Amanjot, who was seed No. 1 in the tournament, gave a walkover to Il-Hae Kim of Korea in his second round match, while Akash Sharma also gave a walkover to Daryl Lim of Brunei in his second round match.

Fourth seed Rohan Gajjar also withdrew from the event becuase of an injury sustained during last week's final event in Malaysia.

In the boys' doubles, sixth seed Rishi Behl and Saurabh Singh will face Scott Fletcher of Australia and Roger Tan of Malaysia in their first round match, while Nihal Advani and Amit Karunakaran will take-on second seeded Hiu Tung Yu and Brian Hung of Hong Kong.

In the girls' singles, unseeded Nidhi Shah moved into pre-quarter-finals. Top seed Megha Vakharia lost to Septi Nindya Yutami of Indonesia 4-6, 3-6, while Shah got past Eliza Rustandar of Indonesia 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 in their second round matches.

Other Indian girls Krushmi Chheda and Nansi Jharna both crashed out in the second round. Chheda lost to Katarzyna Siwosz of Poland 1-6, 2-6, while Jharna went down to second seed Laosirichon Pichaya of Thailand 1-6, 0-6.

In the doubles, Megha Vakharia and Laosirichon Pichaya of Thailand are second seeds and will face Febri Joanna of Indonesia and Charlene Kuan of Brunei in the first round.

Nidhi Shah and Nansi Jharna will face the South African pair of Michelle Snyman and Susan Erma Delport, while Krushmi Chheda and Lindsay Woon of Malaysia will face Indonesian pair of Diana Julianto and Eliza Rustandar in their first round matches.