Kashyap in Korea Open quarters
INCHEON: Indian shuttler Parupalli Kashyap on Thursday advanced to the Korea Open men’s quarter-final after a 21-17, 11-21, 21-12 win over Malaysia’s Daren Liew here.
He will next face former world No 2, Denmark’s Jan O Jorgensen, an opponent he last played five years ago at the Denmark Open. The 31-year-old Danish shuttler beat eight seeded Indonesian Anthony Sinisuka Ginting 17-21 21-16 21-13 in 58 minutes.
“In the first patch in the second game he was playing really well. I was struggling and once he had a big lead, he played some very good shot. It was tough to make the scores equal,” said Kashyap.
Kashyap is the lone Indian left in the fray in the BWF World Tour Super 500 tournament. In the match, Daren opened up a 4-2 lead early on but Kashyap ensured he had a 11-8 advantage at the interval. The Indian reeled off four straight points after the break to make it 15-10.
Daren, however, reduced the deficit to 14-15 before Kashyap accumulated three points at 18-17 to pocket the opening game. In the second game, Daren came out firing on all cylinders and grabbed 13 straight points to create a huge gap, which Kashyap couldn’t bridge to allow the Malaysian to roar back into the contest.
In the decider, Kashyap produced a blazing run, surging from 1-2 to 12-2 with 11 points. The Indian continued to move ahead even as Daren crumbled.
Earlier, world champion P V Sindhu and Saina Nehwal crashed out following firstround setbacks.
While Sindhu lost 7-21 24-22 15-21 to Beiwen Zhang of United States in her opening-round match, Saina was trailing 21-19, 18-21 and 1-8 against South Korea’s Kim Ga Eun when she was forced to retire due to illness.