Kashyap secured a hard-fought 2-1 victoryover Sri Lanka's Niluka Karunaratne at the Wembley Arena to emulate the feat offellow Hyderabadi Saina Nehwal, who became the first to reach the last eight inwomen's competition at the last Games in Beijing.
Also bringing cheer to the Indian camp wasManoj Kumar who cruised into the pre-quarter finals of the 64 kg men's boxingevent with a convincing first-round victory over Serdar Hudayberdiyev ofTurkmenistan at the ExCel arena last night.
Manoj notched up a 13-7 win in the lightwelterweight category to take the total number of Indian boxers in thepre-quarterfinals to five after the completion of the first-round bouts here.
Manoj started cautiously but graduallyopened up to prevail over his opponent.
Kashyap, ranked 21st in the world, had todraw from all his experience to quell the strong challenge of his rival, ranked27 places below him in the world chart, 21-14 15-21 21-9 in thepre-quarterfinal clash that lasted 66 minutes.
The 25-year-old Hyderabadi thus emulatedthe feat of Saina.
Deepika, on the other hand, flattered todeceive. Touted as a strong medal contender because of her world no.1 ranking,she could not live up to the billing and lost 2-6 against host country's AmyOliver ending her as well as India's archery campaign at the Lord's CricketGround.
The 18-year-old Ranchi girl was completelyoff colour and was no match for her British rival, who easily pocketed theencounter.
