Kirtane in last eight

Wild card Nitin Kirtane kept Indian hopes alive on a day which saw two major upsets and all other Indian players falling in the second round of the third leg of the Desai Brothers-ITF Satellite tennis championship, in Pune, on Wednesday.

Kirtane, a former Indian Davis cupper, won a hard-fought tussle against Alexey Gavrilov of Russia 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 in 2 hours and 10 minutes to enter the quarter-finals.

Playing in front of his home crowd, Kirtane lost the first set but came back in the second by breaking Gavrilov's serve in the 10th game to tie the match at a set apiece. He then dropped his serve in the first game of the third and deciding set, but that was to be the only blemish as he won the match winning six games in a row, breaking Gavrilov in the second, fourth and sixth games. Gavrilov made Kirtane's task easier by serving eight double faults in the match.

In the two major disasters of the day, second seed and 291st ranked Artem Derepasko (Russia) was defeated by Konstantinos Economidis (Greece) 1-6, 6-3, 3-6 in one hour and 41 minutes.

Anton Kokurin of Uzbekistan thrashed third seed Ivan Vajda of Crotia 6-2 6-4 in an hour and 25 minutes.

Derepasko, who had a tough time against Jonathan Marray of Britain on Tuesday, had a bad start against Economidis and lost five games in a row after holding his serve in the second game.

Though he won the second set, Economidis took an early lead of 3-0 by breaking Derepasko in the second game and went on to win the set and the match 6-3.

Economidis will meet Nitin Kirtane in the quater-finals.

The two other Indians on fray, Vishal Uppal and Manoj Mahadevan were outplayed by their opponents.

Vishal Uppal could not stop the dream run of Aisam Qureshi of Pakistan and lost 2-6, 4-6 in an hour and eight minutes.

Qureshi, who had served 15 aces to defeated seventh seed Radim Zitko of Czech Republic, continued his big serving with 10 aces. He will now meet Anton Kokurin in the quarter-finals.

Manoj Mahadevan put up a brave fight against fourth seed Tomas Cakl of Czech Republic but failed to stride through. Cakl won the match 6-3, 5-7, 6-1.

Mahadevan matched his opponent in the first two sets and even won the second set to level the scores. But he ran out of steam in the decider and lost his serve thrice in the 1st, 3rd and the 7th game to bow out of the tournament.

Cakl will now meet sixth seed Donavan September of South Africa, who defeated Simon Dickson of Britian in a one-sided affair 6-3, 6-4.