BWF French Open | Saina Nehwal, PV Sindhu, Kidambi Srikanth through to quarters
It was a good day for the Indian continent participating in the French Open as medal hopefuls Saina Nehwal, PV Sindhu, and Kidamb Srikanth, all qualified for the quarter-final round. In the doubles category, the duos of S Rankireddy/C Shetty and M Attri/ S Reddy also made it to the next round.
After a shockingly early exit in the Denmark Open a few weeks back, Sindhu looks to have stabilized her form in the ongoing French Open. After beating Beiwen Zhang in the first round, Sindhu overcame the challenge of Japan’s Sato Sayaka in the second round winning the match 21-17, 21-16 in straight games.
The outcome was expected and Sindhu started the first game accordingly taking a lead of 9-5 before going into the break 11-5. She was in the lead post the break before Sayaka came back to level things at 16-16. However, Sindhu took the game beyond doubt by winning the next four points following which Sayaka failed to make a comeback. The second game was expected to be competitive but the Japanese had already given up with the match ending in 45 minutes. Sindhu will next face Chinese World No. 7 He Bingjiao.
Denmark Open finalist Saina Nehwal had a tougher draw in the second draw as she was facing Japanese World No. 8 Nozomi Okuhara. Those who had written off Saina’s victories against Okuhara and Akane Yamaguchi in the Denmark Open as a fluke were proved wrong yet again as the Indian veteran finished on top in France as well.
It wasn’t going to be easy and Saina understood it very early in the match when the Japanese blew her away from the word go. After
After seeing off Wing Ki Vincent comfortably in the first round, Srikanth had a trickier contest against South Korea’s Lee Dong Keun. After numerous underwhelming displays, the World No. 5 had finally found some form in Denmark Open where he had gone till the semis. However, he was given an early jolt as Keun won the first game 21-12. It was intense throughout with Srikanth reducing a huge margin before trailing at the break 8-11. But, after Srikanth closed in on 14-11 the Korean opened up a huge lead of 20-11 from which Srikanth couldn’t recover.
The Indian was expected to bounce back and he did exactly that by winning the next two games 21-16 and 21-18 as the match lasted a whopping one hour and thirteen minutes. However, Srikanth’s biggest challenge lies in the next round when he faces Kento Momota, the Japanese whom he hasn’t been able to beat since 2015. The World No. 1, who has brought an end to Srikanth’s journey in his last six tournaments, enjoys a 9-3 head to head and is the clear favourite to go through this time as well. The other game in the men’s singles category saw B Sai Praneeth losing to Indonesia’s Jonathan Christie 16-21, 14-21.
The doubles category saw the prodigious duo of Swastiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty beating China’s He Jiting and Tan Qiang 21-13, 21-19 in the men’s doubles category. In the men’s doubles match, Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy also qualified for the next round by beating China’s Liu Cheng and Nan Zhang.
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