Odense: On a fruitful day for the Indian shuttlers, Saina Nehwal and P V Sindhu stormed into the women’s singles quarterfinals while two men’s players also secured places in the last-eight stage of the Denmark Open Badminton event on Thursday.
London Olympics bronze medallist Saina made short work of Minatsu Mitani 21-12 21-10 in her second round contest, which lasted just 38 minutes. Before Saina’s win, two-time World Championships bronze medallist Sindhu took just 31 minutes to get the better of Ksenia Polikarpova of Russia 21-17 21-19. Since the top two women shuttlers from India are in either half of the draw, they could clash for the title if they win two more matches.
In the men’s singles, Srikanth defeated Chinese Taipei’s Jen Hao Hsu 21-12 21-15 in 45 minutes while Kashyap fought hard before prevailing over Dionysius Hayom Rumbaka of Indonesia 21-17 17-21 22-20 in a contest that lasted 69 minutes.
World No. 10 Sindhu opened up a 4-0 lead in the first game and continued to widen the gap, eventually winning it 20-17. In the second game, Sindhu quickly broke away from a 2-2 tie to take a slight edge and then she kept on extending it to make it 19-15 at one stage. But a brief fight back from the Russian saw her closing the gap to 19-20 before Sindhu used all her experience to wrap it up in her favour.
In men’s singles second round matches, Srikanth had a rather comfortable outing, Kashyap faced a stiff challenge from his Indonesian rival. The game swung from one end to other before the Indian held his nerves 20 to advance to the next stage.
