Basel, Mar 15: India’s ace shuttler Saina Nehwal stormed into the quarterfinals of the Swiss Open Grand Prix Gold badminton tournament with a straight game win over of Petya Nedelcheva of Bulgaria here.
Saina, who is the defending champion and top seed here, took exactly half an hour to get the better of Nedelcheva 21-15 21-10 in the pre-quarterfinals of the women’s singles event late last night.
By virtue of this win, Saina, who reclaimed World No 2 position yesterday, took a 6-2 head-to-head lead over 23rd ranked Nedelcheva.
Saina will next face sixth seeded Tzu Ying Tai of Chinese Taipei in the quarterfinal later today.
Barring Saina, curtains fell on India’s challenge in the tournament as all other shuttlers from the country made early exits.
Rising star P V Sindhu made an exit from the tournament after losing to qualifier Yui Hashimito of Japan 21-23 11-21 in a second round contest of the women’s singles event.
London Olympics quarterfinalist Parupalli Kashyap also crashed out in the pre-quarterfinals of the men’s singles event after losing to Wei Feng Chong of Malaysia yesterday.
The fifth seeded Indian squandered a game advantage to lose to his ninth-seeded opponent 21-18 7-21 16-21 in a 55-minute contest.
In another men’s singles pre-quarterfinal match, H S Prannoy lost to Tien Chen Chou of Chinese Taipei 16-21 21-15 15-21 in an hour’s contest.
In men’s doubles, the Indian duo of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and Akshay Dewalkar was handed a straight-game defeat by the Korean top seeds Sung Hyun Ko and Yong Dae Lee, who won 21-14 21-12. (PTI)
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