Thursday, September 22 2005 13:59 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kolkata: Indian tennis sensation Sania Mirza broke the hearts of her admirers when she crashed out of the WTA Sunfeast Open tournament while her compatriot Shikha Uberoi scalped the eighth seed Rika Fjiwara to move into the quarterfinals.

Crowd favourite Sania went down to the much lower ranked Hungarian Melinda Czink in a three setter 0-6, 6-4 and 6-4 in the second round, while Uberoi upset the Japanese 6-2 and 6-3.

However, later Sania paired up with Virginia Ruano Pascual to breeze past India's Punam Reddy and Ragini Vimal 6-1, 6-0 and go into the doubles quarter final.

Czink relied on her powerful forehand to stage a remarkable comeback after being completely outplayed by Sania in the first set to win the tie and enter the quarters.

The partisan crowd at the Netaji Indoor stadium had a whale of a time in the first set cheering every aggressive shot by the 34th ranked Mirza, who looked unstoppable. But the complexion of the match changed soon after Sania's serve completely deserted her and she lapsed into frequent unforced errors, also losing her confidence in the process.

In contrast, the 122 ranked Hungarian grew in confidence as the match progressed and sent down delightful winners to close the match in a little less than two hours.

Shikha, ranked 152 in the world, rode on her big serves and let loose power-packed winners to unsettle her opponent and raided the prospects of a last eight date with top seed Anastasia Myskina, provided the Russian wins her second round match.

The cool-as-cucumber Indian broke her rival in the second game, but was immediately broken back. However, Skhikha kept up her good show to demolish Fujiwara in the fourth and eighth games to take the set.

The second set saw the Japanese seizing the initiative as she broke Shikha in the fifth game but the Indian bounced back by breaking the Japanese in the sixth and eighth games to seal the issue.

In other matches top seed Anastasia Myskina of Russia started in style crushing Edina Gallovits of Romania 6-1, 6-2.

While, second seed Russian Elena Likhovtseva and seventh seed Croatian Karolina Sprem did justice to their reputation, carving out easy victories in their lung openers.

Sprem breezed past Evie Dominikovic in straight sets 6-4, 7-5, while Likhovtseva outclassed Yuliana Fedak of Ukraine 6-1, 6-3.