Top seed Shweta Kakhandki of India and second seed Ditthim Punjaporn of Thailand advanced to the final in the second leg of the ITF Pakistan International Under-18 Tennis Championships with contrasting semi-final victories in the girls' singles on Thursday.
In the semi-finals, Kakhandki beat Wannasuk Nungnudda of Thailand 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, while Punjaporn had little difficulty in overcoming Daksha Mulay of India 6-3, 6-3.
Kakhandki effected breaks on the fifth and seventh games to win the first set easily. But in the second, Wannasuk, who win the 1st leg, was more consistent and put the Indian on the defensive. The Thai girls broke in the eight game and held serve in the next to take the set.
In the final set, Wannasuk established a 3-1 lead after breaking the Indian in the third game. But Kakhandki fought back and levelled the score 3-all by breaking in the sixth game.
From then, it was the Indian who dominated play as she took the next three games to win the tie.
In the second semi-final second seed Ditthim effected breaks in the eight games of both sets to beat Daksha and enter the Saturday's final.
In the boys' dobles, Shahzad Khan/Wasif Cheema (Pakistan), Roy Rupesh/Gupta Sumit (India),
Siributwong Peerakit (Thailand) / Das Kaushik (India) and Shokeen Vivek (India) / Sivendaran Nishindaran (Sri Lanka) advanced to the semi-finals.
Results:
Boys' doubles quarter-finals:
Khan Shahzad/Cheema Wasif (PAK) beat Mann Lalit / Sandeep Kumar (IND) 7-6(2), 6-1; Roy Rupesh/Sumit Gupta (IND) beat Mutib Pasha/Khan Adnan (PAK) 6-0, 6-1; Siributwong Peerakit (THA)/Kaushik Das (IND) beat Ejaz M. Usman/Ahmed Danish 6-4, 7-6(3); Vivek Shokeen (IND)/Sivendaran Nishindaran w/o Haq Nouman ul /Yahya Numan (PAK).
Girls singles semi-finals:
Shweta Kakhandki (IND) beat Wannasuk Nungnudda (THA) 6-2, 3-6, 6-3; Ditthim Punjaporn (THA) beat Mulay Daksha (IND) 6-3, 6-3.
The match of boys' singles and doubles semi-finals and girls' doubles final will be played on Friday at 10:00 am.
