Karunoday upsets Vijayanth

Chennai: Karunoday Singh put paid to the aspirations of Vijayakant Malik to make the semifinals of the B R Adityan-GNC ITF Men`s Futures Tennis Championships here on Thursday.

Top seed Sriram Balaji scored a confident straight sets win over Mohd Fariz, while second seed Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan seemed to be in spot of bother against Kaza Vinayak Sharma with the score being 5?all. Kaza could not continue and had to retire due to cramps.

In another quarterfinal match, eigth seeded Karunoday Singh upset the finalist of last week and third seed Vijayant Malik in three sets. A fresh and calm Vijayant used Karunodhay`s pace craftily to force errors form the latter to take the first set 6-4.

Thereafter, Karunodhay combined aggression with consistency as Vijayant wilted under constant pressure to go down 3-6 2-6 in the next two sets. Karunodhay will meet Jeevan in the semifinals. Karunoday had beaten Jeevan in the quarterfinals in the Futures event held last week.

Results: N Sriram Balaji (IND) [1] Bt Fariz Mohammed (IND) 6-3,6-2 Karunuday Singh (IND) [8] Bt Vijayant Malik (IND) [3] 4-6,6-3,6-2 Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan (IND) [2] Bt Vinayak Sharma Kaza (IND) [6] 5-5 retd. Toshihide Matsui (JPN) [4] vs Prajnesh Gunneswaran (IND) [7] postponed.

Men`s doubles semifinals: N Sriram Balaji (IND)/Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan (IND) [1] vs Zach Itzstein (AUS)/Vignesh Veerabadran (IND) postponed Fariz Mohammed (IND)/Vignesh Peranamallur (IND) vs Keith-Patrick Crowley (RSA)/Arun-Prakash Rajagopalan (IND) [2] postponed.