Ho Chi Minh City: Shuttlers Ajay Jayaram and Rituparna Das progressed to the pre-quarterfinals of the USD 75,000 Vietnam Open badminton tournament here Wednesday with fluent wins.
Jayaram defeated Indonesia’s Gatjra Piliang Fiqihila Cupu 21-7, 21-16 to set up a clash with top seeded Brazilian Ygor Coelho, who staved off a spirited challenge from India’s Siril Verma with a 22-20, 17-21, 21-17 victory. Earlier in the day, Siril had defeated compatriot Shreyansh Jaiswal 21-17, 21-16.
In women’s singles, former national champion Rituparna beat Japan’s Shiori Saito 21-13, 21-14. However, it was not a rosy ride for other Indian women. Among those who bowed out of the event were Rasika Raje, Mugdha Agrey, Vaidehi Choudhari and mixed doubles pairs — Shivam Sharma and Poorvisha S Ram (sixth seeds) and Dhruv Kapila and Meghana Jakkampudi.
Rasika went down to Malaysia’s Yen Mei Ho 16-21, 13-21, Mugdha lost 13-21, 12-21 to China’s seventh seed Han Yue and Vaidehi suffered a 14-21, 13-21 loss to USA’s Crystal Pan.
The Japanese pair of Tadayuki Urai and Rena Miyaura beat sixth seed Shivam and Poorvisha 21-15, 21-16, while the Chinese pair of Jiang Zhenbang and Chen Yingxue endeddashed the hopes of Dhruv and Meghana 21-17, 18-21, 23-21 in another match.
Mithun Manjunath, who had reached the quarters at Russian Open, had beaten Japan’s Ryotaro Maruo 11-21 21-14 21-15 earlier in the day.