Lucknow: World championship bronze medallist P V Sindhu and national champion K Srikanth continued their march towards their first final appearance of the season when they registered contrasting victories to reach the semifinals of the Syed Modi International India Grand Prix Gold tournament presented by Ponty Chadha Foundation at the Babu Banarasi Das UP Badminton Academy here on Friday.
Second seed Sindhu, who had reached the final of the last edition, needed just 34 minutes to pack off Indonesia’s seventh seed Hera Desi 21-11, 21-13 and will now take on fourth seed Lindaweni Fanetri who had little trouble in packing off Arundhati Pantawane 21-10, 21-7 in the other quarterfinal.
With all the top four seeds knocked out of the men’s draw, Srikanth was the highest seed in action on Friday in the Syed Modi International being conducted by the UP Badminton Association under the patronage of the Badminton Association of India offering USD 120,000 in prize money, and he was given a scare by11th seed B Sai Praneeth before prevailing 21-18, 20-22, 21-12 in a hour and 12 minutes. He will will now take on 7th seed H S Prannoy for a place in the final.
Prannoy, the 2010 Youth Olympics silver medallist, packed off giant killer Zulfadli Zulkiffli of Malaysia 21-19, 21-14. Zulfadli had upset top seed and defending champion P Kashyap on Thursday but the Malaysian had no answer to the smashes of Prannoy.
The other semifinal will see Aditya Prakash take on 9th seed Xeu Song of China. Aditya got the better of Iskandar Zulkarnain Zainuddin 21-19, 18-21, 21-16, while Song needed 50 minutes to end the run of Shubhankar Dey 21-18, 21-15.
