Badminton Asia Championships | Indian challenge ends as Saina Nehwal, PV Sindhu, Sameer Verma bow out

Nehwal didn’t have a great start to her women’s singles quarter-final tie against Akane Yamaguchi of Japan in Wuhan, China. The Indian shuttler ended losing the match in the decider by 13-21, 23-21, 16-21 points and bowed out of the competition. She gave a tough fight in the second game against the Japanese and eventually took the match into the decider in which the seventh seed Indian made a good start as well. She eventually lost the third and final game by 21-16. 

Later in the day, Sindhu also crashed out against Cai Yanyan of hosts China in straight games 19-21, 9-21. The Chinese had an 11-7 lead at the mid-game break in the first game after which fourth seed Indian showed some skills to make a comeback. However, that was not enough for her to take the first game as Yanyan took a 1-0 lead in the match by winning the first one 21-19. The Hyderabadi shuttler was completely outplayed in the next game and had no chance to go up against Yanyan to push the game into the decider. Sindhu lost the game by 9-21 points and failed to reach the semis. 

In the men’s singles quarter-final, Verma’s good run in the tournament came to an end as he lost 10-21, 12-21 to Shi Yuqi from China. Verma was no match for the second seed player in the championship and the Chinese maintained the dominance against unseeded Verma right from the outset. With a huge 11-5 lead in the first game itself, Yuqi gave no chance to Verma to create any sort of upsets in the quarters and sailed into the semi-finals in his home country. After taking the first game 21-10, Yuqi also won the second one pretty easily to knock the Indian out of the competition.