All England Badminton Championship | Indian challenge ends as Saina Nehwal, Kidambi Srikanth crash out in quarter-finals
Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth lost their quarter-final encounters on Friday and with that, India’s challenge at the ongoing All England Open Badminton Championship has come to an end. Nehwal lost to Tai Tzu Ying in women’s singles while Srikanth was defeated by Kento Momota in men's singles.
Nehwal went down to World No. 1 Tai in straight games of 15-21, 19-21 to bow out of the championship in spite of putting up a fighting show. The Chinese-Taipei shuttler dominated from the beginning of the first game and at the mid-game break, she had a huge lead of 11-3. The 28-year-old Indian didn’t find a single way to reduce the margin and Tai went on to grab the first game with a huge point difference of 21-15.
However, Nehwal didn’t lose hope in the second game and had a lead in her favour at the mid-game break. But, the change of ends helped the World No. 1 to come back into the contest and finally, Tai restricted Nehwal from taking the game into the decider by winning the second game 21-19. This was Nehwal’s 13th consecutive defeat against the Chinese-Taipei shuttler.
The men’s singles match was no different for Indian badminton fans as Srikanth was defeated by Japan’s Momota in straight games as well. Although it was Srikanth who started the first game on a positive note, Momota took the lead just before the mid-game break at 11-9 and from then onwards the Japanese shuttler didn’t look back and won the first game by a big margin of 21-12.
The second game, however, was a bit more competitive after the mid-game break where Momota had a lead of 11-4 points. Just before Momota could take away the match from him, the Indian shuttler saved four match points but eventually went down 16-21 and was knocked out of the championship. The match lasted 44 minutes and that marked the end of India’s challenge at the prestigious competition in Birmingham.
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