Sachin Ratti shocks Chetan Anand

Top seed Pulella Gopichand, third seed Arvind Bhatt and two unseeded players, Sachin Ratti and Siddharth Jain, advanced to the men's singles semi-finals in the Late Harichand memorial ranking badminton championships in Kanpur on Thursday.

However, two seeded players -- Chetan Anand (ONGC) and Ravinder Singh (UP) -- fell by the wayside. While second seeded Anand was ousted by Sachin Ratti of Railways in the quarter-finals, fourth seed Ravinder was knocked out by Thomas Kurien of Kerala in the pre-quarter-finals on Thursday morning. However, Kurien was halted in his stride by Siddharth Jain in the quarter-finals. Jain beat him 7-3, 5-7, 7-3, 7-4.

Gopichand beat J B S Vidyadhar of Railways 7-3, 8-6, 7-2 in 30 minutes and set up a meeting with Karnataka's Arvind Bhatt, who accounted for C M Sashidharan of Andhra Pradesh 4-7, 7-2, 7-4, 8-6 in another quarter-final.

The second semi-final will be between Siddharth Jain and Sachin Ratti, who beat Chetan Anand 7-2, 7-2, 7-4.

In the women's section, P V V Laxmi of PSCB was the first to move into the semi-finals, defeating Poonam Tiwari of Railways 7-0, 7-0, 7-1.

Gopichand moved to the quarter-finals after thrashing Hemant Duggal of Railways 7-1, 7-1, 7-1. He was joined by Thomas Kurien, who created the first upset of the tournament meet by defeating fourth seed Ravinder Singh 5-7, 8-7, 7-0, 7-5.

In other matches of the morning session, Arvind Bhatt of Karnataka did not face much difficulty in moving to quarter-finals, defeating Arup Baidya of Rly by 7-0, 7-5, 7-2; Sidharth Jain (PSCB) beat Mangresh Palekar 7-2, 0-7, 7-1, 5-7, 7-4 and JBS Vidhyadhar(Rly) beat Roopesh Kumar (Kerala) by 7-2, 3-7, 5-7, 7-3, 7-5.