Tandon, Mangaonkar in last eight of world junior squash

July 15th, 2011 - 3:22 pm ICT by IANS  

Herentals (Belgium), July 15 (IANS) India’s top junior Ramit Tandon, seeded 5-8, and Mahesh Mangaonkar entered the quarter-finals of the WSF Men’s World Junior squash championship.

Tandon, an 18-year-old from Kolkata who was runner-up in this year’s Asian Junior Championship, is the only player making his fifth successive appearance in the championship and he beat unseeded fellow countryman Abhishek Pradhan 11-6, 8-11, 11-3, 11-8 here Thursday.

Mangaonkar, the 17-year-old from Mumbai, overcame fellow 9/16 seed Nicholas Hopcroft, from England, 11-8, 11-5, 11-4.

“I was pretty confident,” said Mangaonkar. “I’ve studied Nick’s game since I was 11. Although I have never played him before, I really worked on how to play him. Also, I told myself that I’ve got to go and do it! After all, I’ve been training for a year for this event!”

In the quarter-finals, Tandon takes on top seed Amr Khale Khalifa of Egypt while Mangaonkar meets another Egyptian, Marwan El Shorbagy, the second seed.

Earlier, in the second round, Tandon beat Abdulla Al-Tamimi of Qatar 11-5, 11-8, 11-9, while Mangaonkar accounted for Cedric Kuchen (Switzerland) 11-2, 11-4, 11-5.

Meanwhile, Kush Kumar made his exit in the second round, as Khalifa beat him 11-4, 11-3, 11-1, in just 22 minutes.

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