Sania Mirza after defeating Zhang Shuai of China in the second round, in Guangzhou, on Friday. (AFP)

Guangzhou: Pankaj Advani’s hopes of winning another medal at the Asian Games were, on Friday, cut short by China’s Junhui Ding, but Aditya Mehta kept the Indian challenge alive by advancing into the quarter finals of the snooker singles event at the Town Gymnasium.

Advani failed to replicate his gold-winning performance in billiards and lost 1-4 to top-seed Junhui in the pre-quarter finals of the individual event. Mehta, however, displayed fine potting skills by occupying the cue table for most of the time to win the best of seven frames pre-quarterfinal 4-2 against Chinese Taipei’s Yu-Lun Wu.

Ace racqueter Saurav Ghosal kept the tri-colour fluttering by progressing into the semi-finals of the men’s singles squash event, even as the women players Joshna Chinappa and Dipika Pallikal crashed out of the medal contention.

Sania Mirza did not disappoint as she toppled sixth seed Chinese Shuai Zhang to seal a quarter final berth in the women’s singles, while Somdev Dev Varman and Karan Rastogi routed their rivals to move to pre-quarter finals of the men’s singles tennis event. In the men’s doubles matches later, Somdev combined with Sanam Singh to beat Johnny Arcilla and Ruben Gonzales of Philippines 6-4 6-2 and advance to the quarters.

India’s medal hope Rashid Khan carded two-over 74 to slip to the fourth spot, while his team mates too were off colour on the penultimate day of the golf championship. Besides Rashid’s 74, Abhinav Lohan (74) and Rahul Bajaj (78) also had a forgottable day as India dropped to fourth spot from third.

On a day when South Korea primed itself further to make a clean sweep of all four gold medals, in men's and women's sections, none of the four Indians was able to break par.

In the women’s section, Indian girls were far behind the leading bunch. Shreya Ghei (239) was 21st, while Vani Kapoor (242) and Gurbani Singh (242) were tied 22nd.

In the hockey events, Indian women’s team led by Surinder Kaur pumped in four goals to register a thumping 13-0 victory over minnows Thailand in the round robin league to keep themselves in the reckoning for a bronze medal.

India improved their chances by logging three points from their second victory in four matches to boost their tally to six and in fourth position. The other goal-scorers for India in the one-sided match, in which they were 7-0 up at half time, were Rani Rampal (3) and Subhadra Pradhan (2) while Chanchan Devi, Anjum Saba, Poonam Rani and Joydeep Kaur scored once each.

In boxing, Commonwealth champion Dinesh Kumar became the second Indian boxer to assure himself of a medal at the Asian Games by advancing to the light heavyweight 81kg semis, after out-punching Korean Jinho Heo.

Paramjeet Samota was the first Indian to assure himself of a bronze by reaching the semi-finals of 91+ category.

In the other Indian bout, 18-year-old Vikas Krishan (60kg) too inched closer to the medal round, advancing to the quarters with an 8-1 triumph over Amangeldi Hudaybergenov of Turkmenistan. He will now take on North Korea’s Kim Chol Song, who defeated Abdulla Mohammed 7-5 in his pre-quarter final bout.

The poor run of the taekwondo players continued as all the three fighters in the reckoning on Friday —Surendra Bhandari, Chandan Lakra and Srishit Singh — crashed out of their respective events.

Grandmaster P Harikrishna pulled off an upset win over Rustam Kasimdzhanov to lead India to a 4-0 drubbing of Uzbekistan and jump to the top of the table after the second round in the men’s chess team competition.

In archery, Deepika Kumari led the women’s archery team into the pre-quarterfinals with a creditable display. However, her compatriots Dola Banerjee and Laishram Bombayla Devi put up a flop show.

(PTI)