New Delhi: It was curtains for ace Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal as her jinx at the Indian Open Super Series continued after she suffered an ignominious defeat to lower ranked Bae Youn Joo of South Korea in the pre-quarter finals played here at the Siri Fort Sports Complex on Thursday.
Saina had a good start to the tournament and moved past the first hurdle unlike last year where she lost out in the first round and was expected to keep the momentum going. But then much against everyone’s amusement the World Number 5 Indian flattered only to deceive and crashed to a shocking 19-21, 10-21 defeat at the hands of the unseeded player from South Korea in just 39 minutes.
Saina seeded third in the tournament started off well and raced off 9-6 in the first game, but Youn fought her way back to win five consecutive points to make it 11-9. But then Saina was looking as though she was in no mood to relent and quickly raced off to 19-16. It was from here that everything went haywire for Saina and she was able to get it right. She eventually lost five consecutive points to lose the set which was there for the taking.
Saina was expected to pull it back in the next game, but what followed was a sloppy display of badminton by one of the top class players of the World. She was not able to negotiate the shuttle resulting in series of bad shots which helped Yoon to proceed to the quarter-final round.
"I played badly, don't really know what happened. Sorry,” that was all that the disappointed Saina could say after the match.
P.V Sindhu touted as the next big thing was the only Indian to have made it to the quarter final round of the Women’s singles. Sindhu ranked 27th pulled up a stunning 21-17, 22-20 victory over World number 11 Ji Hyun Sung.
Parupalli Kashyap showed great resiliency to come from behind to beat Thailand's Boonsak Ponsana 15-21, 21-14, 22-20 to reach the quarterfinals. He is now just a win away from realizing the London Dream and if he loses out in the next match, then Ajay Jayaram would make it to the Olympics. Jayaram earlier lost 16-21, 21-15, 5-21 to world number one Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia.
Meanwhile star Indian pair of Ashwini Ponnapa and Jwala Gutta who lost to Indonesian pair of Vita Marissa and Nadya Melati at the Asian Badminton championship exacted their revenge to beat them 16-21, 21-15, 21-17 to move into the quarters.
By Samikshan Dutta Choudhury
Indian Sports News Network
