New Delhi, Oct 17 (IANS): Top seed and defending champion B.R. Nikshep staved off a strong challenge from Mritunjay Badola to enter the singles final of the boys' under-16 category at the 20th Fenesta Open National Junior Tennis Championship here Friday.

Nikshep dug deep before prevailing 7-5, 6-4 in an hour and 25 minutes at the DLTA complex here.

In the final Saturday, Nikshep will face second seed Vasisht V. Cheruku, who too had a testing time against S. Manish before winning 7-6(3), 6-2.

In the girls under-16 singles semi-finals, however there was an upset with top seed Jennifer Luikham being shown the door by Ramya Natrajan, who won 6-3, 6-1.

In contrast, second seed Zeel Desai faced no such resistance and sailed through comfortably, blanking Shivani Ingle 6-0, 6-0.

Ramya and Zeel will now battle out in the final Saturday.

The boys' under-14 final will be played between Siddhant Banthia and Digvijay Singh. Top seed Banthia showed good form to see off Nikit M. Reddy 6-1, 6-1 while Digvijay got the better of Saurav Kalkal 6-1, 6-0.

The other upset of the day was in girls under-14 category where top seed Prinkle Singh crashed out in the semi-finals, losing 6-7(5), 0-6 to Sabhyata Nihalani.

In the other semi-final, Sathwika Sama defeated Arja Chakraborty in a tough three-setter. Sathwika lost the first set in the tie-breaker but then fought back to prevail in the next two sets.

The doubles title in the boys' under-16 category was won by Vashisht V. Cheruku and Nitin K. Sinha. The duo, however, faced stiff challenge from Yugal Bansal and Arman Bhatia but managed to win 2-6, 6-4, 10-8.

The girls under 16 doubles crown went to Zeel Desai and Jennifer Luikham, who defeated Akshara Iska and Ramya Natrajan 3-6, 6-3, 10-5.