Sindhu wins battle of young guns to script Chennai's win over Hyderabad

ByArun S Kaimal, SportsCafe Editor

01/10/2016

P V Sindhu staved off stiff resistance from Supanida Katethong in a three-setter to win the crucial fourth match in the tie between Chennai and Hyderabad. Chennai ended on the winning side 4-3 to move into the third spot of the PBL table.

In the first match, Hyderabad shuffled the mixed doubles pairing from yesterday's winning team as Markis Kido made way for Carsten Mogensen. Jwala Gutta and Mogensen, however, failed to gel together as they went down tamely to the Chennai pair of Zebediah and Adcock in straight sets.

The second game saw superstar Lee Chong Wei face-off Kuncoro. After a one-sided first set where Kuncoro managed only three points, he bounced back to win the second 15-12. However, Chong Wei, who has faced upset defeats to Srikanth and Sugiarto in the event so far, was in no mood for another. He wrapped up the third set clinically to win it 15-8.

Parupalli Kashyap, meanwhile, continued his miserable recovery run as he suffered another defeat today at the hands of Simon Santoso – he had lost to Sai Praneeth in a three-setter in what was a disappointing turn of events after he had coasted through the first set yesterday. Kashyap lost in straight sets 12-15, 12-15 to let Chennai retake the lead at 2-1.

As expected, Chennai placed their trump on P V Sindhu against Supanida in a battle between the young guns. Initially Supanida gave Sindhu too much time and space, and Sindhu was happy to get under Supanida's lobs to smash repeatedly until 7-4. After some sluggish movement from the Indian let Supanida draw par, Sindhu wrested the sole lead with a stinging body smash to go 8-7. It would take until game point before Sindhu surrendered another point to the Thai as she played some exquisite badminton moving across lithely and setting up angles and attacking well to close it out. Sindhu took the first set 15-8.

After trading blows until 4-4, Sindhu broke away in style with a lightning net smash and was soon comfortably on course with a 9-5 lead. Supanida rallied back with five straight points with a note-able defensive display at 7-9 as she answered Sindhu's smashes and drops time and again, not once but twice with diving returns. Mixing up her game with feints and cheeky drops, the 18-year old Thai reached game point but had to face a game point from Sindhu as well at 14-14. However, she closed out out the game with a delightful, and long, rally that she capped off with a net smash that caught Sindhu straight in the face.

With the crowd divided in its support for the home side against the home-town girl, the crowd started chanting Supanida's name vociferously at one point. The crowd seemed to be set for a contest until 7-4 in favor of the Hyderabadi lass. Sindhu, however, put to rest any danger of a come-back as she ran away with the game to go up to 12-4 and then closed it out at 15-5 to set Chennai up with an unassailable 4-1 lead.

In the final match, Markis Kido and Carsten Mortensen won Hyderbad's trump match to take the team's core to 3-4 against the Chennai side.

Scores:

Hyderabad Hunters vs Chennai Smashers 3-4

Jwala Gutta/ Carsten Mogensen vs Pia Zebadiah/ Chris Adcock 15-7, 15-7

Lee Chong Wei vs Kuncoro 15-3, 12-15, 15-8

Parupalli Kashyap vs Simon Santoso 12-15, 12-15

Supanida Katethong vs P. V. Sindhu* 8-15, 15-14, 5-15

Carsten Mogensen/ Markis Kido* vs Pranaav Chopra/ Chris Adcock 15-12, 15-13