Hyderabad, June 4: Manaswi Seelam of Andhra Pradesh scored a hard-fought 3-2 win over Ankisha Mishra of Uttar Pradesh to secure her place in the main draw of the Youth Girls Under-11 singles of the UTT National Ranking Championships at the Firefox Sports and Resorts facilities today.

Joining Manaswi in the race for qualification, Grace Sukhija topped Group 13 to seal her berth, as did R. Prathiksha of Tamil Nadu from N.K. Harshitha of Kerala, Mohana Shree of Pondicherry and Aparna Veluri of Telangana from Group 22.

Manaswi faced a difficult task in her first Group 8 match when she took on Ankisha, who started well but lost the next two games, letting the Andhra girl lead 2-1 before dropping the fourth.

In the decisive fifth game, both matched each other, but after the deuce, the Andhra girl claimed the last two crucial points to romp home 9-11, 12-10, 11-7, 9-11, 12-10 winners. She put it across Odisha's Meet Pajapanda, winning the second-round match 11-4, 11-2, 11-3.

Aparna Velluri, in the last league game, played brilliantly to overcome resistance from Bengal's Manvi Chowdhury Ghosh. The Telangana girl emerged as 11-7, 11-6, 9-11, 9-11, 11-9 winner in a thriller. It was a crucial match for the local girl, which helped her top the group and advance to the main draw. She accounted for Chhattisgarh's Samaa Pandey 12-10, 11-4, 11-4 in her earlier match.

Delhi girl Grace Sukhi beat her rival from Maharashtra, Adhvika Prabhune, and Rupanka Biswas from Bengal with identical 3-0 victories. Prathiksha from Tamil Nadu had an easy 3-0 win over Sweta Verma of Odisha but struggled to beat Andhra Pradesh's Naina Chandala. Naina won 11-9, 6-11, 6-11, 11-8, 13-11.  

Pranjal Roy of West Bengal and Sudarshan Raj of Karnataka moved into the second stage when they beat their opponents in contrasting ways. Pranjal downed Tamil Nadu's Prahalad Parvastu 11-9, 11-2, 11-13, 9-11, 11-8 and defeated Gujarat's Dhruv Bhambhani 11-4, 11-7, 10-12, 11-3. However, Sudharshan Raj beat Dwij Hirani of Gujarat and Abhay Sreenath of Telangana 3-0.

A few matches were put off for the morrow in the U-11 and U-13 sections as several players are yet to make it to Hyderabad following the tragic train accident in Balasore, Odisha. As a result, the main draw in these sections will now be held tomorrow.

Meanwhile, group matches in the Under-15 Youth Boys and Girls, too, began alongside.