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Gajjar-Raja bow out of Challenger May 15, 2008 20:45 IST After being wiped out from the singles' competition, Indians had a disappointing day in doubles as well at the ATP Challenger Series' SAIL [Get Quote] 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 [Images] 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 [Images] 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.
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