India's Shikha Uberoi brought cheers to the home crowd humbling eighth seeded Japanese Rika fujiwara in straight sets 6-2, 6-3 to march into the quarter final of the US $ 1,70,000 WTA Sunfeast Open in Kolkata on Wednesday.
The Indian, ranked 152 in the world, rode on her big serves and let loose power-packed winners to unsettle her opponent and raided the prospects of a last eight date with top seed Anastasia Myskina provided the Russian wins her second round match.
Slide Show: 2005 Sunfeast Open
The cool-as-cucumber Indian broke her rival in the second game, but was immediately broken back. However, Shikha kept up the good show to demolish Fujiwara in the fourth and eighth games to take the set.
The second set saw the Japanese seizing the initiative as she broke Shikha in the fifth game but the Indian bounced back by breaking the Japanese in the sixth and eighth games to seal the issue.
In other matches, second seed Russian Elena Likhovtseva and seventh seed Croatian Karolina Sprem did justice to their reputation carving out easy victories in their matches.
Sprem breezed past Evie Dominikovic in straight sets 6-4, 7-5, while Likhovtseva outclassed Yuliana Fedak of Ukraine 6-1, 6-3.
Sania's doubles partner in the tournament Virginia Ruano Pascual, also lost in a three setter to Estonian Kaia Kanepi 6-7 (5-7), 7-6 (8-6), 6-1 in another second round outing.
However, later Sania and Pascual breezed past India's Punam Reddy and Ragini Vimal 6-1, 6-0 and entered the doubles quarter final.
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