Saina beats Kim, in Korea Open second round

NEWDELHI: Indian fifth seed Saina Nehwal advanced to the second round of women’s singles with a straight games victory at the $600,000 Korea Open in Seoul.

Saina defeated local player Kim Hyo Min 21-12, 21-11 in 40 minutes in the BWF World Tour Super 500 badminton tournament to take a 2-0 lead over the South Korean in career meetings. World No 10 Saina will next take on Korean qualifier Kim Ga Eun for the first time in her career on Thursday. Later, Vaishnavi Reddy Jakka and Sameer Verma lost their respective first round openers. In women’s singles, American sixth seed Beiwen Zhang defeated Vaishnavi 21-10, 21-9 in 19 minutes while Danish Anders Antonsen beat Verma 15-21, 21-16, 21-7 in 59 minutes.

INDIA BEAT CANADA

CHENNAI: Led by former World Champion Viswanathan Anand, the fifth seeded Indian team in the open section in the Chess Olympiad in Georgia coasted to a comfortable victory against lowly rated Canada winning by three and a half points to half a point.

On the top board, Anand playing black continued his winning streak with a 33-move victory over Eric Hansen. Playing with white pieces, P. Harikrishna overcame the challenge posed by Razvan Preotu in 33 moves. On the fourth board, K. Sasikiran made short work of Aman Hambleton. Vidit Santhosh Gujrathi drew with Evgeny Bareev.

INDIA PLAY INDONESIA

KUALA LUMPUR: India’s under-16 football team will take on Indonesia in its last group match on Thursday in which a win or a draw would end a 16-year wait to make the quarter-finals of the ongoing AFC Championship.

Both India and Indonesia have four points from their two matches. But Indonesia sit atop Group C due to superior goal difference.

ATHLETICS RECORDS

NEWDELHI: Two meet records were set on the second day of National Open Athletics Championships at Bhubaneswar on Wednesday. Haryana’s Anjali Devi clocked 51.79 secs to win gold in the women’s 400m and break 16-yearold record of 51.90 secs set by KM Beenamol. Services’ Sarvesh Kushare’s gold-winning performance of 2.24m in men’s high jump was better than the mark of 2.23m set last year by VS Yadav.

NO ADITI IN INDIAN OPEN

GURGAON: Former champion Aditi Ashok will miss the $500,000 Hero women’s Indian Open golf tournament scheduled to be held from October 18 to 21 at the DLF Golf and Country Club.