New Delhi: India's Rushmi Chakravarthi shocked third seed Katie O'Brien to breeze into the singles quarter-finals along with Sania Mirza and Somdev Devvarman even as Rohan Bopanna's singles challenge ended in the tennis event of the Commonwealth Games, here on Wednesday.
Rushmi had an extremely good day in office as her 1-6 7-6 7-5 win over her British rival was the first upset of the tennis event. Later she combined with Sania to seal a berth in the women's doubles semifinals.
Ranked as low as 616, Rushmi's win over a player, placed 144th in the WTA charts, was one of the biggest in her career.
"It's the first time I've played her and she's seeded, so it was tough one. It was difficult as I am not playing on the circuit. It was one of the best wins of my career," Rushmi said after the match.
The fourth seeded Sania-Rushmi pair humbled Scotland's Mhairi Brown and Jocelyn Rae 6-1 7-6(2) in the second round to become the first team to seal a semifinal berth.
Earlier in the day, top seed Somdev crushed Sri Lanka's Amresh Jayawickreme 6-0 6-1 in men's singles while Sania overpowered Cook Island's Brittany Teei 6-0 6-2 in a women's singles second round match.
However, disappointment too was in store for the hosts as big hope Bopanna went down fighting 2-6 6-7 (5) against second seed and world number 133 Peter Luczak of Australia and Poojashree Venkatesh lost 6-7 3-6 to Guernsey's fifth seed Heather Watson.
Bopanna got his smile back in the evening session when he and Somdev overwhelmed Scotland's Jamie Murray and Colin Fleming to move to the men's doubles quarter-finals.
The second seeded Indian pair beat the Scottish pair 6-3 6-1 in the first round.
As the tournament has churned out several lop-sided contests, Bopanna-Luczak match was awaited for some good action and the two players did not disappoint.
Bopanna, ranked 587, came to this tournament after a morale boosting show in the Davis Cup tie against Brazil and carried the confidence into the tough match.
The home fans expected Bopanna to create an upset win having watched him play fantastically against world number 23 Thomaz Bellucci and top-100 player Ricardo Melo of Brazil in Chennai last month.
However, it was not Bopanna's day though he fought well.
Bopanna's played aggressively, relying on his big ground strokes but it gave plenty of chances to Luczak, who had better control over his strokes and was able to exploit the chinks in his opponent's armour.
Earlier, playing first match of the day for the hosts, Somdev completed his win in 41 minutes while Sania took 55 minutes to send Brittani packing.
The Lankan hardly challenged Somdev and surrendered without any fight. He lost points even when he was in advantageous position in a few games.
He was up 40-0 in the first game but could not pocket the game, committing too many unforced errors to hand Somdev a break. The Indian wrapped up the opening set in 20 minutes
The Lankan finally went onto board by holding his serve in the first game of the second set.
"I think I played a lot better today. The win yesterday helped me a lot. I served pretty well, I did not drop a serve and was making life tough for him," Somdev said.
The 97th ranked Indian said Australian players will pose a good challenge for them.
"Australia has the deepest team. They are all seeded. They are considered favourites but it will exciting," he said.
Sania, who had got a bye in the first round, scored an easy win but said easy opponents could be tricky sometime.
"You don't really know what to expect as they have nothing to lose. Tennis is a funny game," she said.
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