Saina wins thriller against Marin at BWF Superseries Finals
World No.2 Saina Nehwal kept her hopes alive with a thrilling three-set victory against World Champion Carolina Marin. However, it was not as good a day for K Srikanth who faced his second straight defeat in the tournament.
World No.2 Saina Nehwal kept her hopes alive with a thrilling three-set victory against World Champion Carolina Marin. However, it was not as good a day for K Srikanth who faced his second straight defeat in the tournament.
Saina Nehwal, who lost her first league encounter against N Okuhara, put up a valiant fight today against arch rival and World Champion Carolina Marin and came out the winner 23-21, 9-21, 21-12.
The first game began with Saina racing to a quick lead of 3-1, but an unforced error by the Indian put a stop to her run. Saina ensured that play was extended to long rallies, as she was trying to catch the World No.1 on the back foot. Marin broke her serve twice to come back 2-3 and 3-5, but Saina kept the game under control as she raced to a 6 point lead at 9-3. Marin, however, fought back to win seven straight points to take the lead 10-9.
The duo traded serves to equalize at 12-apiece, before Marin dominated from there on to take the score to 15-12. Saina equalised the game yet again at 15-15 and kept the pressure on her Spanish counterpart, to take the score to 19-16, and was just two points away from pocketing the first game when Marin came up with a good down-the-line smash to close out a long rally making it 17-19. The Spaniard managed parity again at 19-19 to make it a gruelling contest, but an unforced error gave Saina her first game point.
But two unforced errors from the Indian turned the tables to give Marin match-point at 21-20. The Indian finally held her nerve to equalize the game and won the next two points to win the first game 23-21.
In the second game, both the players initially exchanged serves to make it 3-3. The game inched its way as it was set at 5-5, but the Spanish lass broke free to shift the momentum in her favour to lead 7-5 and on to 11-6. The ‘Woman Player of the Year' from Spain kept the leash tight around the Indian nominee, as she rose to an 11-point lead at 18-7 before closing out the game 21-9 to take it to the decider.
The match was set at one-game each and 4-points apiece when Saina found her rhythm to break free as she took a five-point lead at 10-5. Marin managed to take three straight points to make it 8-10, but the gritty Indian fought out a long rally on the next point to lead 11-8.
Saina was in cruise mode from there on, as she increased her lead to 18-9. After a brief three points went the Spaniard's way, Saina won the next point with a lucky net shot, as it just tumbled across after touching the tape, before converting her first match point to win the game 21-12.
The Indian will face Tai Tzu Ying tomorrow in a bid to book a semi-final berth.
Meanwhile, World No.8 Srikanth Kidambi bowed out of the tournament with his second straight defeat. Srikanth bid adieu after a straight-games loss to Viktor Axelsen of Denmark. After two defeats in two games, the Indian lad is left with a dead-rubber against Chou Tien Chen tomorrow, in the group stage.
The Indian held a 2-0 head-to-head record against World No.6 Victor Axelsen of Denmark before the match began, but that was of no help to him today.
Axelsen started the match on an aggressive note with a smash to the right hand corner of the court to win his first point. He raced to an 8-4 lead within minutes with both players resorting to an aggressive game. Srikanth closed the gap to one point before the break with some excellent net-play, but the Dane continued his dominance after the break with a few exceptional cross court smashes to win the first game 21-13 in seventeen minutes to go one up against the World No.8.
Both players continued the attacking game to the second game with short rallies and smashes dominating the proceedings. Similar to the first game, Axelsen dominated the opening exchanges in the second game to race to a lead of 6-1. Srikanth portrayed his attacking intent with two consecutive smashes to close the gap on the Dane. With the fourth-seeded Dane having an upper hand on the attacking play, the Indian went into the break trailing 5-11.
Srikanth’s struggle to Axelsen’s attacking game continued after the break with the Dane sending the Indian to all corners of the court. The Guntur lad showed a reminiscence of his old self in the latter stages of the second game to close the gap to 15-19 and survived two match points to keep a foot in the game. However, the Dane finished off the match with a straight games victory of 21-13 21-18 in 37 minutes.
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