World Championships silver medalist Kidambi Srikanth on Thursday advanced to the men’s singles quarter-finals of the German Open Super 300 badminton tournament, but in women’s singles two-time Olympic medalist PV Sindhu and London Olympics bronze medalist Saina Nehwal were defeated. suffered defeat.
Former world number one and eighth seed Srikanth registered a 21-16, 21-23, 21-18 victory over China’s Lu Guang Zhu in the men’s singles second round match that lasted one hour and seven minutes.
He will next face Denmark’s Olympic champion and top seed Viktor Axelsen, who defeated France’s Toma Junior Popov 21-17, 21-10 in another match.
World Championships 2019 winner and seventh seed Sindhu lost 14-21, 21-15, 14-21 to lower-ranked Chinese Zhang Yi Man in the second round here that lasted 55 minutes.
Saina, who has been battling fitness issues, lost 10-21, 15-21 to eighth seed Ratchanok Intanon of Thailand in a one-sided match.
Srikanth performed brilliantly against world number 27 Guang Zhu. The Indian made a good start to lead 8-3, but Lu made a good comeback. Srikanth was leading 11-10 till the break. After this the score at one time was 14-14. Srikanth then scored four consecutive points and then won the first game.
Srikanth was able to take a 15-11 lead in the second game after falling behind initially, but Lu did not give up and leveled the match by saving a match point.
In the third and deciding game, Srikanth was leading 10-5. Although Lu at one point raised the score to 15-14, the Indian soon caught on and made his career record 3-0 against his rival.
Earlier, the start of the European leg was disappointing for Sindhu. He is among the title contenders for the All England Championships starting next week.
The Indian player could not find the momentum initially and Zhang first leveled at 5-5 and then scored six consecutive points to take an 11-5 lead. He continued to play well after that and won the first game easily.
Sindhu made a comeback in the second game. She was leading 11-10 at the break and then won the game to level the match. But the Chinese regained the momentum in the deciding game and did not give any further chances to the Indian player after leading 11-8 till the break.