Three Indians, including third seed Rushmi Chakravarti, crashed out in the quarter-finals of the US dollar 10,000 ITF Women's Tennis tournament bringing an abrupt end to the hosts' challenge in the championship in Mumbai on Thursday.
Chakravarti, ranked 372, hardly justified her higher ranking against her unseeded rival Mihaela Buzarnescu of Romania, 240 places below the Indian in the Women's Tennis Association rankings, and lost tamely 4-6, 2-6 at the Practennis courts in suburban Andheri.
Punam Reddy and wild card Shruti Dhawan, in marked contrast, put up a much better display against their seeded rivals Montinee Tangphong of Thailand and Yurika Sema of Japan respectively before losing in three tightly fought sets.
Second seed Montinee got past Punam, ranked 213 places below her Thai rival, 1-6, 6-1, 6-0 in a contest that lasted close to an hour and a half in hot and sultry conditions.
Seventh seed Yurika took two minutes under two hours to subdue a fighting Shruti 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 in another quarter-final encounter.
Shruti clinched the opening set by breaking her rival's serve in the fourth and eighth games while losing her own serve in the fifth.
The Indian challenger led 3-2 in the second before going off the boil for her rival to storm her way back into the match and seal a place in the semis.
In tomorrow's semi-finals, Yurika will clash with Montinee while Mihaela will face top seed Chin-Wei Chan of Chinese Taipei who was too good for fifth seed Natsumi Hamamura of Japan and won the one-sided tie 6-1, 6-0.
Results: Singles (Quarter-finals): Chi-Wei Chan (Tpe) bt Natsumi Hamamura (Jpn) 6-1, 6-0; Yurika Sema (Jpn) bt Shruti Dhawan (Ind) 3-6, 6-2, 6-2; Mihaela Buzarnescu (Rom) bt Rushmi Chakravarti (Ind) 6-4, 6-2; Montinee Tangphong (Thai) bt Punam Reddy (Ind) 1-6, 6-1, 6-0.
