Last year’s under-21 women’s Champions Hannah Hicks progressed through to the semi-finals but her final opponent, Emily Bates, failed to get through her group.

While Hicks was winning comfortably in her group, with three successive 3-0 victories over Evangeline Collier, Abbie Milwain and Hannah Noutch respectively, Bates was finding the going tough.

Her group was a fiercely competitive one with current number one junior Vicky Smith (who had only just displaced Bates at number one) also fighting for the one place in the next round.

In the end Smith won all her three group games to join Hicks in the semi-finals as seeds, while Bates also lost to Isobel Ashley on a miserable afternoon for her.

The quarter-final line-up was made up of Emma Vickers, Chloe Whyte, Jessica Dawson and Natalie Slater.

Whyte had to beat Yolanda King 3-1 (6-11, 12-10, 16-14, 11-9) to reach the quarters and a match against Emma Vickers who had to beat Tin-Tin Ho in a tight match that ended 3-2 (11-9, 7-11, 11-8, 10-12, 11-7).

In the other quarter-final Dawson, who won all three of her games including a 3-0 win over Tressa Armitage (13-11, 11-7, 12-10), will now play Natalie Slater after she progressed through her group on count-back.

Slater beat both Karina Le Fevre and Charlotte Spencer but lost to Emma Torkington who beat Spencer as well, but in turn, lost to Le Fevre.

With two wins between the three of them it came down to Slater’s eight game wins compared with both Le Fevre and Torkington’s seven.