India’s star shuttler Saina Nehwal sailed into the women’s singles quarterfinals but another medal hope, Kidambi Srikanth, crashed out out of the World Championships after suffering a straight-game loss here today.<\/p>\n
Saina, who had clinched a silver and a bronze at the 2015 and 2017 editions, downed 2013 champion Ratchanok Inthanon of Thailand 21-16 21-19 to set up a meeting with Olympic champion and two-time world champion Carolina Marin of Spain.<\/p>\n
The Indian mixed doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa also stood one step away from a medal after pulling off a stunning 20-22 21-14 21-6 victory over the Malaysian world no.7 combination of Goh Soon Huat and Shevon Jemie Lai.<\/p>\n
However, fifth seed Srikanth’s dream of winning a medal came crashing after he was outwitted 18-21 18-21 by the experienced Malaysian Daren Liew in a 41-minute clash.<\/p>\n
“I had my chances but couldn’t keep the shuttle in. Too many smashes out, too many mistakes. I should have handled it much better,” said Srikanth.<\/p>\n
Saina showed amazing retrieving skills against Inthanon, who is on a comeback trail after recovering from an injury.<\/p>\n
“It is a very good win. She is known for a deceptive game. Second game was going my way, but suddenly she played some difficult strokes, she was everywhere and made it 19-19. At that point, Gopi sir played a big role. He told me what to do and I followed that and the game turned in my favour,” Saina said.<\/p>\n
“Pressure is less on me now because the last few tournaments I haven’t been able to cross the quarterfinals but I have played well at the Commonwealth Games and Asian Championship. But I can see that the form sometimes goes here and there but I am happy it is coming back in important events.”<\/p>\n
Talking about her next match against Marin, Saina said: “I have played her at Denmark Open last, she is quick and aggressive and it would be a challenging match for me and I will just look to give my best.”<\/p>\n
Earlier, Ashwini and Satwik showed great composure as they recovered from a game down to prevail over their higher ranked opponents.<\/p>\n
It was an even battle in the opening game where the Malaysian pair managed an 11-8 lead at the break and though Ashwini and Satwik clawed back at 14-14 and even held a slender 18-16 lead at one stage, their rivals were more composed to pocket the game.<\/p>\n
In the second game, Goh and Shevon opened up a 5-2 lead but this time Ashwini and Satwik drew parity at 9-9 and then broke off to bounce back into the contest.<\/p>\n
In the decider, the Indian pair was brilliant as it aggressively dominated the proceedings. They led 11-4 at the interval and continued in the same vein after the breather to storm into the quarters.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India’s star shuttler Saina Nehwal sailed into the women’s singles quarterfinals but another medal hope, Kidambi Srikanth, crashed out out of the World Championships after suffering a straight-game loss here today. Saina, who had clinched a silver and a bronze at the 2015 and 2017 editions, downed 2013 champion Ratchanok Inthanon of Thailand 21-16 21-19 to set up a meeting with Olympic champion and two-time world champion Carolina Marin of Spain. The Indian mixed doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa also stood one step away from a medal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16286,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16288,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16284\/revisions\/16288"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}