Rohan Gajjar kept the Indian challenge alive at $ 15, 000 ITF Futures tournament after knocking his third seed Spaniard opponent out to book a semifinal berth in the men's singles event in New Delhi on Thursday.

Gajjar defeated Guillermo Alcaide 7-6 (6), 6-4 in the quarterfinal match, which lasted one hour and 22 minutes at the DLTA Complex.

Navdeep Singh, however, crashed out of the event after losing his last eight match against Kazakhstan's Alexey Kedryuk 0-6, 5-7 in one hour and 38 minutes.

Gajjar would now face off with Kedryuk in the semifinal, to be played on Friday.

The second semifinal will be played between second seed Alexander Satschko of Germany [Images] and Bulgarian qualifier Simeon Ivanov.

While Satschko beat seventh seed Serbian David Savic 6-3, 6-2 Ivanov pipped Chinese player Peng Sun 7-5, 6-3 in their quarterfinal matches on Thursday.

After Navdeep Singh's ouster, the responsibility to keep the Indian tri colour flying fell on Rohan, who did not disappoint by beating a tough player in Guillermo, who had ousted national champion Ashutosh Singh in the first round.

It was a match, fought with intensity, which was evident from the fact that only once Rohan broke the Spaniard and that was too early in the second set.

First set was stretched to the tie-breaker, in which the Indian prevailed, after both the players held their serves to be six-all.

Rohan did not give Guillermo any chance to bounce back as he broke him the third game to create vital lead. Rest of the games went with serve and Rohan romped home.

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