PV Sindhu, the World No.15, beats her Japanese opponent in straight sets to enter the semi-finals of the Indian Open
Indian shuttler P.V. Sindhu, seeded eighth, advanced to the women’s singles semi-finals of the $200,000 India Open Super Series on Friday.
In her quarter-final, the World No.15 beat Japanese Yui Hashimoto 21-16, 21-16 in New Delhi's Siri Fort Sports Complex.
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This was Sindhu’s first win over the World No.46 Japanese to whom she had lost in the Swiss Open Grand Prix Gold in March. Hashimoto had beaten Olympic bronze medallist Saina Nehwal in the second round.
P V Sindhu beat her Japanese opponent in straight sets to enter the semi-finals of the Indian Open. File Pic
The 17-year-old, who had beaten former World No.1 Shixian Wang of China at the Badminton Asia Championships in Taipei last week, continued her good form to get the better of Hashimoto u00a0in 47 minutes.
Hashimoto, who defeated Saina Nehwal yesterday, looked no match for Sindhu.
In the opening game, Sindhu started off with a bang, quickly opening up an 11-4 lead and in no time she extended it to 19-9. But just when things seemed to be in total control of the Indian, Hashimoto raised her game.
She went on to win nine points on the trot, mainly taking advantage of unforced errors from Sindhu, to reduce the gap to 16-19.
The Hyderabadi, who had the cushion of a ten-point lead, showed a lot of patience and clinched the next two points to seal off the first game, 21-16.
The second game was a neck-and-neck battle with none of the players sparing an inch. There was never a difference of more than three points between them and that continued till 14-14 before Sindhu won another three straight points to take it to 17-14.
The game involved long rallies that Sindhu managed to win by hitting powerful smashes.
Although the Japanese earned a couple of more points but in the end, Sindhu comfortably prevailed over her opponent.
"My opponent made mistakes and that made the difference," said Sindhu after the match.
Sindhu will next take on World No. 6 Ratchanok Intanon of Thailand, who earlier on the day defeated India’s Arundhati Pantawane, in another singles match. The Indian went down fighting to third seeded Intanon 14-21 21-7 21-16 in 52 minutes.u00a0
This will be the Sindhu's second appearance in the last four stage of a Super Series event, the first one being at China Masters last year.
Sindhu had on Thursday said that she was waiting for top seed Saina Nehwal in the women’s singles quarterfinals after winning her second round match against China’s Sun Yu 19-21, 21-19, 21-15. But unfortunately, that much anticipated meeting couldn't take place with title favourite and world number two Saina suffered a shock defeat at the hands of unseeded Yui Hashimoto of Japan in controversial circumstances.
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