Ghosh defeated Anirban Nandi of Railways 4-1 while others who joined them in the next round for the title race, included Sushmit Sriram of Tamil Nadu who beat Ronit Bhanja of West Bengal 4-1 and Birdie Boro who accounted for a fighting Nitin Thiruvengadam of BBSCB 4-2 to book their semi-final spots.
Among the other women seeds that followed Archana Kamath's ouster, included West Zone winner Sreeja Akula, Madhurika Patkar while top-seeded Sutirtha Mukherjee of Haryana survived against Railways' Sagarika Mukherjee 4-3. Ayhika Mukehrjee, too struggled before overcoming Reeth Rishya 4-3.
Earlier, third-seeded Sudhanshu Grover went down to Bhanja 2-4 in the pre-quarters like fifth seed Archana Kamath who was consumed 4-0 by Anusha Kutumbale. Grover was found wanting as he not only failed to keep the ball on table but also gave away quite a few negative points to his opponent. Nevertheless, Bhanja hit a nice rhythm and had good counters to whatever was sent down by Grover. The match also witnessed good rallies with several winners coming Bhanja's way.
But other seeded players defied the trend in both sections and marched into the quarterfinals, like fifth-seeded Jeet Chandra and Ghosh, both from Haryana, who won in contrasting styles. Ghosh easily defeated his former PSPB mate Subhajit Saha 4-1, while Jeet struggled, taking an extra game to outlast LIC's Sougata Sarkar.
But the interesting match-up was between old warhorse Nandi of Railways and promising youngster Abimanyu Mitra of West Bengal, which the Railways paddler won 4-1. Equally difficult it was Sriram who had to play his best to beat Sourav Saha of Haryana 4-2 and Thiruvengadam making most of the negative points from Ravindra Kotiyan of Railways to register his triumph 4-3.
After Kamath's struggle, Madhurika Patkar was almost taken the full distance by Railways Kaushani Nath, while it was a real hard-fought win for sixth-seeded Prapti Sen against experienced Pooja Sahasrabudhe. Sahasrabudhe, trailing 0-2, did well to level the score but it was the West Bengal girl who had the last laugh winning the last three games to progress. Second-seed Mukherjee should thank her stars for being let off by the inexperienced young Tamil Nadu paddler, Kowshika Venkatesan, who lost the decider after deuce.
( With inputs from IANS )