Kuala Lumpur: K Srikanth continued his impressive run to enter the men’s singles quarterfinals, even as India’s campaign in the women’s singles came to an end after Saina Nehwal and PV Sindhu lost their respective second round matches in contrasting styles in the Malaysia Super Series Premier badminton event here on Thursday.
The newly-crowned national badminton champion Srikanth came from a game down to register an upset victory over World No. 17 Son Wan Ho of South Korea 11-21, 21-19, 21-19 in a contest that lasted an hour and nine minutes.
However, Olympic bronze medallist Saina went down fighting 16-21, 21-10, 21-19 to a lower-ranked Yao Xue of China in 56 minutes, while Sindhu lost to sixth seed Yeon Ju Bae of Korea 21-16, 21-19 in 45 minutes.
Srikanth, ranked 38, showed a lot of fighting spirit after he lost the opening game tamely. But the Thailand Open Grand Prix Gold winner kept his nerves to emerge victorious in the second and third games.
In the first round, Srikanth had defeated World No. 11 Hu Yun of Hong Kong.
He will next take on World No. 4 Tommy Sugiarto of Indonesia in the quarterfinals.
World No. 8 Saina, who had endured a tough season last year as she could not win a single title, failed to turn around her fortunes in her season opener here.
Saina lived up to her billing in the first game as she faced little trouble in overcoming World No. 25 Xue.
But the Indian was in for a rude shock in the second game as the Chinese girl maintained an upper-hand throughout. Saina, surprisingly, could not catch her opponent even once during game two.
She sealed the second game without breaking a sweat and then took the third after a tougher fight from the Indian shuttler. (PTI)
