Wild card Mihika Yadav in last 16 of Nashik ITF Tennis Championships

Nashik: Mihika Yadav became eligible for a women's ITF ranking after getting past Vasanti Shinde to make it to the second round at the USD 10,000 NIWEC-ITF Tennis Championships here.

Mihika, a member of the bronze medal winning Maharashtra team at the last National Games in Trivandrum, made full use of the wild card she had been awarded by scoring a 6-2 1-6 6-4 victory in 1 hour and 45 minutes against her 18-year-old left-handed opponent.

Mihika, just 16, also made it to the ITF women's ranking list by having earned points in two ITF events earlier at Pune and Aurangabad.

In another opening round matches, top-seeded Ching-Wen Hsu of ChineseTaipei ousted India's Rashmi Teltumbde 6-2 6-0 in just 57 minutes.

Third seed Dhruti Venugopal, no. 5 Sri Vaishnavi Peddi Reddy and no. 7 Sowjanya Bavisetti too had easy passage into the round of sixteen.

The results (1st round): Ching-Wen Hsu [1] bt Rashmi Teltumbde 6-2 6-0; Dhruthi Venugopal [3] bt Moulika Ram 6-2 6-3; Sri Vaishnavi Peddi Reddy [5] bt Vaniya Dangwal 7-5 6-3; Eetee Maheta bt Vaibhavi Trivedi 6-1 6-4; Sneha Padamata bt Vasavi Ganesan 6-3 6-1; Sowjanya Bavisetti [7] bt Arantxa Andrady 6-1 6-1; Zeel Desai bt Nithya Raj Babu Raj 6-1 6-2.