PBL 2018 | Chennai Smashers beat Mumbai Rockets to register first win in league

The Chennai-based franchise managed to win their men’s singles, women’s singles, and mixed doubles matches to emerge victorious on the day despite Mumbai Rockets’ Son Wan Ho winning his trump match to grab two points for his team. The clash started with Men's doubles encounter which went neck to neck in the initial phases, but Mumbai Rockets' Lee Yong Dae and Tan Boon Heong managed to defeat the Smashers' pair of Sumeeth Reddy and Lee Yang with the final tally of 15-9, 15-6 and bagged the first point for their team.

After that, World No. 24 Brice Leverdez of France made a brilliant debut for Chennai as he defeated World No. 30, Sameer Verma, to win 15-14, 10-15, 15-14 in a high-intense Men's Singles clash.

In the third contest of the day, Chennai's star player PV Sindhu survived a scare in the women's singles before emerging winner against World No 11 Beiwen Zhang of USA and gave her team a 2-1 lead in the tie. The Indian began well but lost 12-15 to the World No. 11 from America in the opening game. She, however, displayed her typical grit, control, and composure to level the match and win the second game with a 15-7 score. The third game saw Zhang went inch ahead in a one-point lead at 5-4, but Sindhu again kept her calm and regained the lead at the break with the 8-7 score and finished the game with a 15-9 win.

Trailing 1-2 in the match, World No 5 Son Wan Ho of Korea led Mumbai's fightback by fetching an extra point as he registered a comfortable victory over Tanongsak Saensomboonsuk of Thailand 15-11, 15-5 in the Trump match. Son showed his authority early in the first game, leading 8-2 at the break, but Thailand's Saensomboonsuk staged a spirited comeback to make it 11-11. Son, though, held his nerves to win the first game 15-11 and began the second game in the same manner and raced to an 8-3 lead at the break and tamed his opponent 15-5 to hand Mumbai a 3-2 lead.

In Chennai’s trump match, the husband-wife pair of Chris and Gabrielle Adcock came out all guns blazing to win the first game 15-9 against MR Arjun and Gabriela Stoeva in the mixed doubles match. Arjun and Stoeva won the second game 13-15 which forced the encounter to enter into the decider. Chris and Gabriela overcame the second game loss and won the third game as well as the match 15-9, 13-15, 15-9.