Pankaj Advani in semis

National champion Pankaj Advani upset top seed Paithoon Phonbun of Thailand by six frames to two to enter the semi-finals in the World Snooker Championship at Jiangmen, China, on Thursday.

His compatriots Vidya Pillai and R Uma Devi, however, were unable to maintain their good showing and bowed out at the quarter-final stage after losing to better-ranked opponents.

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Advani now faces fifth seed Brendan O'Donoghue of Ireland, who defeated fourth seed Dermot McGlinchey of Northern Ireland 6-1.

Speaking from Jiangmen, Advani said, "After two tough matches in the knock-out stage, I started off well in the quarters against Phonbun with a 83 clearance break and then everything went on smoothly."

On the earlier two knock-out matches, which he won after losing the first three frames, Advani said, "I just managed to win those matches. That gave me the confidence that I can go further."

Earlier, in the pre-quarter-finals, Advani rallied from a 0-3 deficit to turn tables on eight seed Elfed Evans of Wales 5-4.

Like his first knock-out match, Advani took time to settle down and found himself trailing by three frames, with Evans looking set to finish the tie at the earliest. But the youngest national champion in Indian history kept his cool and bounced back to level the scores at 3-3 and then take the tie 54-66, 36-76, 41-63, 83-30, 69-48, 77-8, 0-102, 93-24, 68-34.

In the women's section, Vidya and Uma Devi made an impressive start to the day as they won their pre-quarter-final matches with ease.

Vidya defeated Australia's Kathy Parashis 3-1 (35-77, 49-17, 47-37, 47-21) while Uma Devi upset sixth seed Pan Xiaoting of China 46-24, 44-35, 62-17 to enter the last eight.

But their dream run was brought to an end by second seed Wendy Jans of Belgium and third seed Lynette Horburgh of Scotland by identical 4-0 verdicts.

Jans blanked Vidya 67-18, 57-23, 66-29, 63-9 while Horburgh thrashed Uma Devi 63-18, 60-21, 66-22, 110-28.