London, Aug 1 (PTI) Parupalli Kashyap created history by becoming the first Indian shuttler to reach the men's singles quarter-finals and Saina Nehwal too powered her way into the last-eight stage even as much-hyped archer Deepika Kumari flopped miserably at the Olympics, here today. No good news came for India from any other discipline today as the hockey team suffered its second straight defeat when it lost abjectly 1-3 to New Zealand in Group B and women shooters' poor run extended with the ouster of Annu Raj Singh and Rahi Sarnobat in the 25m pistol event. Last night, though boxer Manoj Kumar cruised into the pre-quarter finals of the 64 kg men's boxing event with a convincing first-round victory over Serdar Hudayberdiyev of Turkmenistan at the ExCel arena. Manoj notched up a 13-7 win in the light welterweight category to take the total number of Indian boxers in the pre-quarterfinals to five after the completion of the first-round bouts here. Early in the day, a major controversy erupted over the ouster of shuttlers Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa from the women's doubles event as a controversial defeat of Japanese badminton team against the Chinese Taipei knocked India out of the reckoning of the quarter-finals. The result prompted the Indian team management to lodge a protest, which however was rejected by the world badminton body. India, Japan and Chinese Taipei finished with identical two wins and a loss each in Group B. Jwala and Ashwini finished third in the table with a point difference of 3, while Chinese Taipei (21) and Japan (4) qualified from the group. Kashyap, ranked 21st in the world, had to draw from all his experience to quell the strong challenge of his rival, ranked 27 places below him in the world chart, 21-14 15-21 21-9 in the pre-quarterfinal clash that lasted 66 minutes. The 25-year-old Hyderabadi, thus, became only the second from the country after Saina in Beijing 2008, and the first male shuttler, to enter the last eight in badminton which became an Olympic discipline in 1992. Kashyap will meet world number two Lee Chong Wei of China in the last-eight stage. More
