London: Shuttler Saina Nehwal and tennis duo of Leander Paes and Sania Mirza kept India's medal hopes alive on day six of the London Olympics 2012.
Badminton ace Saina stormed into the semi-finals of the women's singles badminton competition, while Paes-Sania booked a place in the quarter-finals of the mixed doubles tennis event.
Saina Nehwal was up against Tine Baun of Denmark in the quarter-finals on Thursday that saw the Indian prevailing in a tense finish with a scoreline of 21-15 in the first game and 22-20 in the second.
Saina, 22, was clearly the better player in the first game against the 33-year-old Dane as the Indian ace never let her opponent off the hook. However, in the second game Baun put up a stiff resistance and at one point was up three game points. However, Saina didn't give in and after saving the game points, won the second game 22-20.
Paes-Sania looked good in their first match of the London Olympics, which was a Round-of-16 affair against the Serbian pair of Ana Ivanovic and Nenad Zimonjic. The Indian pair defeated the Serbs 6-2, 6-4.
It was a fairly easy match for the Indian pair, who are the last hope left for India in the tennis competition, after the men's doubles pairs of Paes-Vishun Vardhan and Mahesh Bhupathi-Rohan Bopanna bowed out.
At the shooting range, it was a mixed day for India. While Vijay Kumar kept India's hopes alive by staying in hunt of a qualification in the 25m Rapid Fire Pistol event, medal hope Ronjan Sodhi finished a disappointing joint 10th in the Double Trap competition.
Vijay ended Stage 1 of the qualifiers at overall fifth position but joint second with 293 points. Vijay shot seven inner 10s in the first stage of qualifications with an average score of 9.767. Four shooters have the same score – Cuba's Leuris Pupo, China's Feng Ding, Martin Podhrasky of the Czech Republic and Jian Zhing of China. Russia's Alexei Klimov leads the table with 294 points.
The top six shooters after Stage 2 on Friday will go through to the final.
Vijay won two gold medals at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games and a bronze medal in the Asian Games the same year.
But Sodhi failed to live up to his reputation and ended joint 10th in the qualifying event after shooting three rounds of 48, 44 and 42. He needed a score of at least 47 in the last round of shooting but missed on eight occasions, which put an end to his chances of progressing to the final.
Boxer Jai Bhagwan's Round of 16 bout against Kazakhstan's Zhailauov in the men's lightweight (60kg) category was the first of the two boxing bouts of the day for India. However, it brought further bad news as he lost the match with a margin of 8-16 to bow out of the competition.
After winning the first round 3-2, Jai Bhagwan was penalised heavily by the referee in the second which the Kazakh won 10-3 to put a comeback beyond Jai. The final round was won by the Kazakh 4-2.
Young badminton sensation Parupalli Kashyap lost in the men's singles quarter-final, where he had a mountain to climb against the World No. 2 Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia. Kashyap put up a fight but lost 19-21, 11-21.
Kashyap began on a promising note and was at one point enjoying a healthy lead in the first game but Wei never let it go beyond his reach and caught up to win it. The second game was not a contest at all, with the Malaysian sealing his win easily to progress to the semi-finals.
From the boxing arena there was some good news, as Vijender Singh entered the quarter-final of the men's boxing 75 kg category with a close 16-15 points victory over his USA opponent Terrell Gausha.
Vijender, a bronze medallist in the Beijing Asian Games four years ago, will take on Uzbek boxer Atoev Abbos in the round of last eight on Monday.
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