Sunil Kumar loses to Ivan Cerovic in quarter

Gulbarga, Oct 25 (UNI) Sunil Kumar Sipaeya, the lone Indian left in the fray in the US Dollar 15,000 Gulbarga Open ITF men's tennis tournament, today went down fighting to third seed Ivan Cerovic of Croatia 7-5, 4-6, 6-2 in the quarterfinals.

Sunil stretched the ITF 466th ranked Croatian to the limit, who bounced back in style after losing the opening set. The eighth seed lost control in the second set and looked too exhausted to carry the challenge forward in the decider.

The power packed service of the Croatian proved too tough to handle for the Indian star who was ranked 605.

In the other quarterfinals, sixth seed Alexey Kedryuk of Kazakhstan surprised second seed Rainer Eitzinger of Austria 6-3, 6-4.

However, unseeded Philipp Oswald of Austria defeated top seed Poval Cervenak of Slovakia 6-3, 6-2, while fourth seed Dekel Valtzer of Israel rallied to beat seventh seed Marek Semjan of Slovakia 5-7, 7-5, 7-6(7).

In the semi finals tomorrow, Ivan Cerovic faces Alexey Kedryuk while Philip Oswald will meet Dekel Valtzer.

In the doubles semifinals, Vijay Kannan(Ind)/Alexey Kedryuk(Kaz) defeated Ivan Anikov(Ukr)/S Mishra(Ind) 7-6, 6-3, while Tushar Liberhan/Rupesh Roy(Ind) beat Ivan Cerovic(Cro)/Dekel Valtzer(Isr) 6-4, 6-4.

UNI