India's men's and women's doubles pairs reached the semi-finals of the New Zealand Open Grand Prix badminton tournament in Auckland on Thursday in contrasting fashion.
The top seeded pair of Rupesh Kumar and Sanave Thomas had to fight hard before getting past Indonesian's Wifqi Windarto and Afiat Yuris Wirawan 21-16, 20-22, 21-17 in the quarter-finals of the men's doubles.
They will face Malaysian third-seeds Teik Chai Gan and Bin Shen Tan for a place in the final.
In the women's doubles, Aparna Balan and Shruti Kurian beat Kiwi pair of Michelle K Y Chan and Rachel Hindley 21-7, 21-14 for a place in the last-four, where they will take on top seeds Tsz Ka Chan and Ying Suet Tse of Hong Kong.
Aparna, though, failed to make it a double as she and partner Arun Vishnu went down 14-21, 11-21 to Tontowi Ahmad and Richi Puspita Dilli of Indonesia in the mixed doubles quarters.
The other Indian men's doubles pair of Akshay Dewalkar and Jishnu Sanyal went down 8-21, 19-21 to fourth seeds Hirokatsu Hashimoto and Noriyasu Hirata of Japan in the quarter-finals.
Anjali Kalita and Jyotshna Polavarapu lost 14-21, 18-21 to the Vietnam-Czech Republic duo of Nguyen Nhung Le Ngoc and Kristina Ludikova in the other last-eight women's doubles encounter.
India's campaign in men's singles also ended in the quarter-final stage with seventh-seed Anand Pawar losing 17-21, 21-11, 12-21 to Kazushi Yamada of Japan.
