Gajjar-Raja bow out of Challenger

After being wiped out from the singles' competition, Indians had a disappointing day in doubles as well at the ATP Challenger Series' SAIL Open, with the wildcard duo of Rohan Gajjar and Purav Raja crashing out in the semi-finals in Delhi on Thursday.

Gajjar and Raja squandered a one-set advantage and went down 6-3, 6-7(6), 7-10 to the Kuwaiti-Ukrainian pair of Mohammed Ghareeb and Ilia Marchenko in the last four stage of the US $50,000 event.

With this, the Indian challenge in doubles is now reduced to Prakash Amritraj and his American Indian-origin partner Rajeev Ram.

Amritraj and Ram will take on Australians Colin Ebelthite and Samuel Groth in Friday's semi-finals.

The Aussie duo beat Ricardo Mello of Brazil and Gilles Muller of Luxembourg 7-5, 6-3 in the quarter-finals.

In singles, it was smooth sailing for the seeds, number one Yen-Hsun Lu of Chinese Taipei beating Colin Ebelthite 6-1, 6-4 to set up a semi-final clash with Japan's Go Soeda.

Soeda defeated Kuwaiti wildcard Mohammed Ghareeb 7-5, 7-5.

Third seed Kristian Pless of Denmark also marched into the semi-finals after rallying to beat Englishman Alex Bogdanovic 2-6, 7-5, 7-5.

Pless is now up against seventh seeded American Brendon Evans, who got the better of Australian Samuel Groth 7-6(5), 6-4.