Three seeded players upset in Bangalore

Bangalore:

On a day of upsets, three seeded players, Sanave Thomas (Kerala), Rutuparna Kulkarni (Maharasthra) and D Guruprasad (BSB), tumbled out of the Infineon All India Open Badminton Tournament 2001 here today. In first round encounters, fifth seeded Thomas lost to Andhra Pradesh's K Srinivasan 7-0, 6-8, 7-0, 4-7, 4-7, while Uttar Pradesh's Utsav Mishra ousted eight seed Guruprasad 7-4, 7-0, 3-7, 7-4. Later in the pre-quarter-finals, sixth seeded Kulkarni fell by the wayside as Uttar Pradesh's Ravinder Singh beat him 7-3, 7-2, 8-7. But there were no hiccups for top seed and reigning French Open Champion Abhinn Shyam Gupta (IOC), second seed Chetan Anand (ONGC), third seed Siddharth Jain (ONGC), fourth seed Sachin Ratti (Rly) and seventh seed Arvind Bhat (Karnataka) as all of them advanced to quarter-finals. Gupta, ranked 53 in the world, drubbed Abhijeet Naimpally (BSB) 7-3, 7-3, 7-2. In the women's singles, everything went according to form book with all four seeds, B R Meenakshi (IOC), Jwala Gutta (BPCL), P V V Lakshmi (BPCL) and Divya Ramesh (Karnataka), booking their places in the quarter-finals after recording easy victories. (PTI)