HS Prannoy stuns Kidambi Srikanth to lift maiden title, Saina Nehwal secures her third national championship

In the second game, Prannoy opened up a 2-0 lead before moving to a 7-3 advantage. However, Srikanth recovered with some angled returns and made it 8-8 when Prannoy rushed into a shot and found the net. Then, Srikanth produced a cross-court smash that a diving Prannoy failed to retrieve and Srikanth went to the mid-game interval with an 11-10 again. Post interval, Srikanth continued to gather points and took a 17-15 lead before Prannoy again committed few errors to give him the game at 16-21 that took the match into the decider.

In the final game, it was Prannoy all the way as he engaged Srikanth in fast-paced rallies and that ploy worked as well as he took a 6-1 lead. Srikanth also kept hitting the shuttle back most of the time successfully, Prannoy ensured that he had a healthy 11-3 lead at the interval. After the break, Prannoy didn’t give his academy mate any chance to dominate the proceedings, producing some steep acute-angled strokes and net dribbles to lead 16-4. The World No 2 continued to struggle with his rhythm and one of his backhand returns went to the net to give the match point to Prannoy, who eventually sealed the game to win his maiden national title.

In another match, as expected, two biggest stars in Indian badminton – Saina Nehwal and PV Sindhu - brought their best game to the fore from the outset and went neck-to-neck. Although Sindhu secured the first two points, Saina put her cross-court smashes to great use to level things up at 5-5. Sindhu, however, didn’t let her academy mate completely dominate her but Saina was clearly the best among the duo in the first game and went into the break with a slender lead of 11-9. Saina, mostly, relied on stopping Sindhu from moving more on the court, but the Rio Olympics silver medalist made sure that she was in the game securing four back-to-back points that took the game to 17-16. On the next point, Saina hit a cross-court shot and it landed wide, but that wasn’t sufficient to stop the London Olympics bronze medalist from clinching the first game 21-17.