Indian ace Saina Nehwal grinded her way to first final of the season with a combative win over China’s He Bingjiao at the USD 350,000 Indonesia Masters badminton tournament, here Saturday.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old Indian, who was a runner-up here last year, notched up a 18-21 21-12 21-18 win over sixth seed Bingjiao, a world championship bronze medallist.<\/p>\n
Eighth seed Saina will now face either Spain’s three-time World Champion and reigning Olympic champion Carolina Marin or China’s Chen Yufei, seeded third, in the women’s singles summit clash of the World Tour Super 500 event.<\/p>\n
In their first ever meeting in international circuit, Saina showed better court coverage and unleashed some telling smashes to trouble the 21-year-old left-hander.<\/p>\n
Saina lagged 0-2 initially but clawed back to 5-5 with a couple of smashes.<\/p>\n
Another powerful straight smash left the Chinese stranded as the Indian led 8-6. She then went into the break with a 11-7 advantage.<\/p>\n
The Hyderabadi continued the good run after the breather to lead 16-11 but netted twice to allow Bingjiao narrow down the equation to 15-16.<\/p>\n
A brilliant cross court smash and a superb drop helped the Chinese keep the deficit to a point till 17-18.<\/p>\n
Bingjiao then won a video referral on a line call to make it 18-18. She then unleashed a smash to grab a crucial 19-18 advantage, before holding two game points. The Chinese sealed it when Saina went wide.<\/p>\n
In the second game, Saina pulled away doubling the lead at 6-3 after an initial duel.<\/p>\n
Easy mistakes started creeping in Bingjiao’s game as she found the net often, sent the shuttle long and wide to allow Saina enter the break with a huge 11-3 lead.<\/p>\n
After the interval, Bingjiao took four straight points before Saina engaged her rival in rallies to make it 14-7.<\/p>\n
A beautiful-looking cross court net return helped the Indian swell the lead to 17-9. She then produced two roaring cross court smashes to inch closer to the game point, which she grabbed once the Chinese went wide.<\/p>\n
Saina eventually took the match to the decider with a cross court slice.<\/p>\n
In the final game, Saina continued to go strong, taking a 6-3 lead early on and then extended it to 9-5. The Indian unleashed a straight smash to leave Bingjiao on the ground.<\/p>\n
The Chinese, however, drew parity at 10-10 with a powerful smash which Saina could only sent to the net. Another rally ensued which ended with another shot going to net as Bingjiao led 11-10 at the break.<\/p>\n
After the breather, Saina caught up with the Chinese at 13-13 after prevailing in a rally. The Indian tried to put the shuttle in difficult positions and kept it in play.<\/p>\n
She earned the lead at 17-16 with yet another smash to let out a scream. Bingjiao went to net again and hit wide next as Saina celebrated with fist pumps.<\/p>\n
The Indian grabbed two match points after punishing her rival for a mistake and sealed it with yet another precise return.<\/p>\n
Saina had won a gold medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, a bronze at the Asian Games, besides reaching finals at the Denmark, Indonesia Masters and Syed Modi International last year.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Indian ace Saina Nehwal grinded her way to first final of the season with a combative win over China’s He Bingjiao at the USD 350,000 Indonesia Masters badminton tournament, here Saturday. The 28-year-old Indian, who was a runner-up here last year, notched up a 18-21 21-12 21-18 win over sixth seed Bingjiao, a world championship bronze medallist. Eighth seed Saina will now face either Spain’s three-time World Champion and reigning Olympic champion Carolina Marin or China’s Chen Yufei, seeded third, in the women’s singles summit clash of the World Tour…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20334,"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\/20333"}],"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=20333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20335,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20333\/revisions\/20335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}