India's star shuttler PV Sindhu took another step closer to retaining her title as she reached the women's singles semifinals in the USD 350,000 India Open Super 500 badminton tournament on Friday. However, Saina Nehwal, the other top home shuttler, was knocked out of the India Open.
Saina, who reached the finals at Indonesia Masters last week, looked a little sluggish in her movement and committed too many unforced errors to go down 10-21 13-21 to World No 11 American Beiwen Zhang.
Sindhu dished out an attacking game to beat Spain's World No. 36 Beatriz Corrales 21-12, 19-21, 21-11 in the 35-minute quarterfinal match.
The Olympic silver medallist will face 2013 World champion Ratchanok Inthanon of Thailand in the semifinals. Sindhu dished out an attacking game to walk away with the opening game without much ado but Corrales came back in the second to lead 19-11.
Sindhu, however, reeled off seven points to draw parity at 18-18 but a lucky net chord kept the Spaniard alive in the match.
Back to the winning side of the court, Sindhu once again showed class as she zoomed to an 11-6 advantage at the lemon break. Corrales tried to make a comeback but the Indian ensured there are no hiccups as she used her disguised returns to bamboozle the Spaniard.
A jump smash gave Sindhu 10 match points. Corrales won a long rally before she hit long to hand over the match to Sindhu.
However, it turned out to be a disappointing day for Parupalli Kashyap and B Sai Praneeth as they suffered straight game defeats to their respective opponents to bow out of the tournament.
Commonwealth Games champion Kashyap seemed a bit tired and could not match China's Qiao Bin, losing 16-21 18-21 in the men's singles quarterfinals.
Kashyap blew a 7-2 lead early on in the opening game, while in the second, he erased the 4-11 and 8-16 deficit to claw his way back at 18-18 before Bin surged to close out the match.
"I was struggling to continue the long rallies. Maybe I was tired after the last match. I had a chance in the second game but somehow I was not able to read, come forward and kill the rallies.
Some part of my defence I am not happy with. I perhaps should have prepared better," Kashyap said.
Eighth seed Praneeth too failed to negotiate the fast-paced game of third seed Taiwanese Chou Tien Chen and went down 15-21 13-21. Praneeth was 6-11 behind at the break and though he levelled par at 14-14, Chen quickly changed gears to pocket the first game.
Nothing changed in the second game as the Indian trailed 4-9 before making it 10-11 at the interval. But Chen stepped up and walked away with the match.
"He was hitting really hard. It was long rallies and suddenly he was changing the pace and hitting hard. I was rushing but I should have been more patient on the court," Praneeth said.
Among others, top-seeded Indonesian Marcus Fernaldi Gideon and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo shut out the fighting Indian men's doubles pair of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy 21-19 21-19, while sixth-seeded women's doubles pair of Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy lost 17-21 21-23 to Chinese pair of Du Yue and Li Yinhui.
Seventh-seeded Indian pair of Jakkampudi Meghana and Poorvisha S Ram lost 10-21 15-21 to second-seeded Thai pair of Jongkolphan Kititharakul and Rawinda Prajongjai.
(With PTI Inputs)
