China Open | Indians out of tournament as Kidambi Srikanth, PV Sindhu lose in quarters
India's only remaining shuttlers, Kidambi Srikanth and PV Sindhu, lost their respective quarter-final matches in the ongoing China Open with India ending the Super 1000 tournament on a bitter note. While Srikanth was defeated by Japan's Kento Momota by straight games, Sindhu lost to Chen Yufei.
Srikanth was, as expected, totally outplayed by Momota in the quarter-final round of men's singles as the Japanese dominated from the very beginning of the first game. Srikanth was frustratingly not able to put up a fight against the third seed in the entire course of the match that ended in only 28 minutes. The Indian was never in the game, trailing at the mid-game break by five points. Momota displayed brilliant net play thereafter and gave no chance to the Guntur-born shuttler to stage a comeback, winning the first game 21-9.
The second game was no different as Srikanth looked out of the place. Although the seventh-seeded shuttler collected the first point of the game, the closest that he was to Momota was 3-4. The Japan shuttler just took off from there and didn't bother to look back. After a score of 11-3, he finished the game and the match with a scoreline of 21-11. Momota will play Shi Yu Qi of China in the semi-final.
Later in the day, Sindhu and Chinese shuttler Chen Yufei battled it out against each other in an exciting quarter-final but the Indian shuttler stayed behind in the last game. The Hyderabadi girl lost 21-11, 11-21, 21-15 to the Chinese world number six. Sindhu started off on a poor note and the first game was taken away by the Chinese with a lead of 10 points. Third-seeded Sindhu, however, came back stronger in the next game leading 11-8 at the break. She continued to lead till the end bringing parity after the second game.
The final game was the most competitive one. Both of them went neck-to-neck from the very beginning but the Chinese had the lead half-way through. She carried on with that and didn't let Sindhu bounce back after the break and therefore storming into the semi-finals by winning the last game with a comfortable margin of 21-15 in the end.
