India's Saina Nehwal and P V Sindhu cruise into the Australian Open quarterfinals

Saina Nehwal

Sydney, June 26 (IANS): India's top shuttlers Saina Nehwal and P.V.Sindhu booked their quarterfinal berths with comfortable wins at The Star Australian Badminton Open 2014 here Thursday.

Saina, seeded sixth, took 41 minutes to beat her compatriot P.C Thulasi 21-18, 21-15 while eighth-seeded Sindhu won 21-13, 21-7 against Thai girl Nichaon Jindapon in 31 minutes at the States Sports Centre.

In the men's singles, it was the end of road for talented youngster B. Sai Praneeth, who gave a tough fight to sixth-seed Wang Zhengming of China before going down 15-21, 21-8 and 19-21 in a match that lasted an hour.

After losing the first game, Sai Praneeth bounced back well against the top rated Chinese. Sai Praneeth raced away with the second game and also put up a tough fight in the third but the Wang, the World No. 8, stamped his class at the end.

The men's doubles pairs of Pranaav Jerry Chopra-Akshay Dewalkar and Alwin Francis-Arun Vishnu also suffered a similar fate.

Chopra and Dewalkar went dpwn 13-21, 19-21 to the South Korean pair of Ko Sung Hyun and Shin Baek Choel while Francis and Vishnu were thrashed 18-21, 9-21 by the third-seeded Chinese Taipei's Tsai Chia Hsin and Sheng Mu Lee.