Srikanth beats Lin Dan, Verma up next
ODENSE: Kidambi Srikanth defeated the legendary Lin Dan for the second time in his career to set up an all-Indian quarterfinal against Sameer Verma at the Denmark Open here. World number six Srikanth bounced back from a game down to beat the world number 14 from China 18-21, 21-17, 21-16 in the second round clash played on Thursday night.
Dan, a two-time Olympic gold medallist and five-time world champion, is not the player he used to be but is still a force to reckon with.
It was a fifth meeting between Srikanth and Dan and the Chinese great won the last time they played, in the quarter-finals of the Rio Olympic Games two years back.
Dan took a tight first game 21-18 but the momentum swung towards Srikanth when the latter won the second 21-17 to set up a decider.
In the final game, Srikanth looked in control and managed to surge ahead of the Chinese great before winning it 21-16 to reach the last-eight.
Srikanth had famously scored his maiden win over Dan to win the 2014 China Open After a tough match against the Chinese, Srikanth faces fellow Indian Verma in a quarter-fina clash, which was yet to start at the time of going to press on Fri day.
World number 23 Verma had beaten 2018 Asian Games gold medallist, Jonathan Christie of Indonesia, in his second round match.
Saina Nehwal, on the other hands, also plays her women’s singles quarter-final against eighth seed Nozomi Okuhara on Friday, a match that will be fol lowed by the women’s doubles pairing of Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy taking on top seeds Yuki Fukushima and Say aka Hirota of Japan.