PSCB storm into semis

Star-studded Petroleum Sports Control Board performed true to its reputation to storm into the semi-finals of the men's and women's team championship in the senior National badminton championships in Jaipur on Thursday.

The PSCB men drubbed Bank Sports Board 3-0 in the quarter- finals of the Rahimtulla Cup while their women sailed past Life Insurance Corporation 2-0 in the Chaddha Cup quarter-finals.

The other berths in the men's semi-finals were grabbed by Air India, Maharashtra and Kerala, while Delhi, Railways and Andhra Pradesh made it to the women's last four stage.

With almost all the top players in their ranks, PSCB were expected to dominate. World number six Pulella Gopichand, who was the third singles player on Thursday, did not have to exert himself as his team took an unbeatable lead after first two singles and the doubles match.

Abhinn Shyam Gupta dismissed D Guruprasad 15-1, 15-2 in the first singles match while Siddharth Jain defeated G Kiran 15-4, 15-1 to give a 2-0 lead to the defending champions.

The pair of Marcose Bristow and Chetan Anand then beat BSB team of Abhijeet Nampally and G S Vinay 15-1, 15-1 to seal the victory.

The Aparna Popat-led women's team too did not have any difficulty in defeating LIC.

Popat beat Leena Pedenkar 11-3, 11-3 in the singles while Manjusha Kanwar and P V V Laxmi outclassed the duo of Pedenkar and Vaishali Shirodkar 15-1, 15-6 in the doubles to win the tie.

In other men's quarter-final matches, Maharashtra defeated Delhi 3-0 in an encounter tougher than what the scoreline suggests while Air India beat Uttar Pradesh 3-1 in a keen tussle.

Vivek Gautam of Maharashtra lost the first game against Devender Dhillon but came back strongly to win the opening singles 9-15, 15-13, 17-15. R Kulkarni then beat Ashish Chaddha 15-1, 15-5 to give 2-0 lead Maharashtra.

The combination of Rajiv Bagga and Milind Ghate overcame the Delhi pair of P Gehlawat and Yogender Singh 13-15, 15-10, 15-4 to make it 3-0 and set up a semi-final clash with Kerala, who beat Assam 3-0 in the last quarter-final tie.

Delhi women however reversed the result in the Chaddha Cup defeating Maharashtra 2-0. The other two quarter-final matches were hard-fought affairs with Assam and West Bengal streching their opponents Andhra Pradesh and Railways respectively before going down by an identical 1-2 margin.