Sports Shorts: Ruthvika, Lakshya enter quarters; Joshna in semis

Vietnam Open: Ruthvika, Lakshya enter quarters

Rising shuttlers Ruthvika Shivani Gadde and Lakshya Sen advanced to the women's and men's singles quarterfinals respectively with straight-game wins at the Vietnam Open Grand Prix in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday.

The 20-year-old Ruthvika, who had won the gold medal at the 2016 South Asian Games in Guwahati, defeated Chinese Taipei's Wan Yi Tang 21-15, 21-12 to set up a clash with Indonesian third seed Dinar Dyah Ayustine on Friday.

Lakshya posted a comfortable 21-14, 21-12 victory over Truong Thanh Long in just 32 minutes and will next take on Kodai Naraoka of Japan.

Young Indian shuttlers -- Pardeshi Shreyanshi and Vrushali Gummadi -- however, bowed out of the competition after suffering losses in the pre-quarter-finals.

While Vrushali went down 8-21, 21-12, 10-21 to sixth seed Chen Su Yu of Chinese Taipei, Pardeshi's gallant fight ended in a 6-21, 21-16, 21-23 loss to Ayustine.

But India's men's doubles pair of Arjun MR and Ramchandran Shlok, seeded fifth, got the better of Malaysian duo of Low Hang Yee and Mastan Jinn Hwa 14-21, 21-12, 21-12 to enter the quarter-finals.

On Wednesday, Pratul Joshi lost to Indonesia's Panji Ahmad Maulana 14-21, 19-21 in men's singles, while Yeo Jia Min of Singapore ended Reshma Karthik's stay with a 8-21, 21-7, 21-9 win in another women's singles match.

Kartikey Gulshan Kumar also bowed out on Wednesday after losing to Suppanyu Avihingsanon of Thailand 15-21, 17-21 in another men's singles event.

Joshna enters semi-finals in Hong Kong

India's top-ranked woman player, Joshna Chinappa entered into the semi-finals of the USD 25,000 HKFC International squash, a PSA World Tour event, with a hard-fought victory over Hong Kong's Liu Tsz-Ling in Hong Kong.

Joshna, seeded third, had to toil hard against the eighth seeded Hong Kong player and it was not until the deciding fifth game that she was at ease.

The Indian national champion won the match 11-8, 8-11, 12-10, 10-12, 11-3.

She now faces top seed Annie Au of Hong Kong in the last four stage of the tournament.

However, other two Indians in the fray -- Dipika Pallikal Karthik and qualifier Vikram Malhotra -- bowed out of the competition.

Dipika, sixth seed, was handed defeat by the fourth seeded Tesni Evans of Wales after a hard-fought contest.

Meanwhile, in Kuala Lumpur, India's Harinder Pal Sandhu entered the final of the Malaysian Tour Squash Circuit (SSJM) with an easy win.

Sandhu is now on the threshold of winning his fifth PSA title in a row.

The Indian, top seeded, posted a comfortable 11-1, 11-8, 11-8 win over a Malaysian qualifier Darren Rahul Pragasam in his semi-final match

Ganemat best Indian in skeet at Shotgun World Championship

Ganemat Sekhon, competing in the junior women's skeet event, was the best placed Indian as qualifying rounds of the discipline got off on day six of ISSF Shotgun World Championship in Moscow on Thursday.

She shot rounds of 23 and 22 to be placed eighth with 45 hits out of 50. One more round in qualifying will be followed by the final round on Friday.

Areeba Khan was 25th in the same event with 38 while Simranpreeet Kaur shot 34 to lie in 33rd place.

In men's skeet, all three Indians -- Angad Vir Singh Bajwa, Mairaj Ahmed Khan and Sheeraz Sheikh -- were still in contention with two more days of qualifying to go.

The 112-odd shooters were still closely bunched after two rounds of 25 targets each and still have three rounds to go before the final on Saturday. Only one shooter, Federico Gil of Argentina, shot a perfect 50.

Govt refuses to clear athletes of 7 sports for Asian Indoor

The Sports Ministry has refused to clear around 100 players from seven disciplines who were to participate in the 5th Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games to be held in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, from September 17-27.

The players were stopped from travelling to Turkmenistan on the ground that these sporting disciplines were not recognised by the government and the Indian Olympic Association (IOA).

The national federations of kick boxing, ju-jitsu, traditional wrestling, samboo, belt wrestling, dancesport and muay thai had sent the names of their players to the IOA for the continental event to be held under the aegis of Olympic Council of Asia.

But the Sports Ministry has rejected their participation despite some of these federations wanting to send their players at no cost to the government.