India’s good run in the BWF World Championships continued as Kidambi Srikanth and PV Sindhu marched into the quarterfinals of the men’s and women’s singles events on Thursday at the Emirates Centre in Glasgow.
Kidambi Srikanth
While Srikanth steamrolled Denmark’s Anton Sorensen to surge ahead in the tournament, Sindhu displayed great resiliency to come from behind to win against Cheung Ngan Yi of Taipei to stay on track for her third world championships medal.
The match between Srikanth and Sorensen was expected to be a tough fight but the 14th seeded Danish youngster had no answer to Indian’s precision play and succumbed to 14-21, 18-21 in a match that lasted for 42 minutes.
Coming into the match as a favourite, Sindhu did not get the best of the starts losing the opening game 19-21. It was a close fight in the second game as well with Sindhu winning 23-21. With the match tied 1-1, Sindhu held on to her nerves to win the game 21-17 and seal the match in an hour and 27 minutes. Sindhu, who jumped to the fourth place in BWF Rankings earlier in the day, will now be up against the fifth seeded Sun Yu of China.
PV Sindhu
With Srikanth and Sindhu already in the last eight, other Indians in the fray to make it to the quarterfinals are Saina Nehwal, Ajay Jayaram and B Sai Praneeth. Both Sindhu and Srikanth are just a win away from guaranteeing themselves a medal in the tournament.
Chief national coach Pullela Gopichand is extremely pleased with the way the campaign has shaped so far for the Indian contingent and is hopeful of a good show ahead.
“So far it has really been a very good performance and I am very pleased with the players. We did lose couple of close doubles matches that could have our way but overall it has been satisfying so far,” Gopichand said on sidelines of the World Championships.
Eighth seeded Srikanth, will be up against the top seeded Son Wan Hon of Korea in the next round. Srikanth and Son Wan have faced each other on eight occasions before with both the players winning four times each.
“Son Wan Ho is a very good player and both the players, played couple of really close matches against each other this year with Srikanth winning both of them. Both the players know each other very well and it will be a great contest,” Gopichand added.
Talking about chances of Indian players going the distance, Gopichand said, “All the players including Sindhu, Saina, Ajay, Srikanth, Sai have been doing really good, but it is still early to say the number of medals that we could end up winning. We are taking one match at a time and hopefully we will continue to do well in the tournament,” he added.
While Gopichand is pleased with the entire unit, he heaped special praise on the way Sai Praneeth has played so far. “It was very great to see the way Sai has won his match against Ginting yesterday. He played really well to pull it off and it shows in general the way our players have improved physically and mentally,” the 1999 All England Champion said.
While the singles players have kept the flag flying high so far in the tournament, it was curtains for India in the doubles as the mixed doubles pair of N.Sikki Reddy and Pranaav Jerry Chopra went down fighting to the seventh seeded Indonesian duo of Praveen Jordan and Debby Susanto 22-20, 18, 21 18-21.