Sindhu breezes through to All England quarters
ON SONG Rio Olympic Games silver medallist scores a thumping win over Indonesia’s Dinar Dyah Ayustine in the second round
Rio Olympic Games silver medallist PV Sindhu went through to the quarterfinal of the All England Open badminton championships on Thursday after thumping Indonesia’s Dinar Dyah Ayustine 21-12, 21-4 in the second round in Birmingham.
The Indian was on song right from the very beginning as she opened up a two-point lead early on before consolidating it to lead 11-5 at the break of the first set. Ayustine did manage to pull things back in her favour after the break but fell to Sindhu’s class as the Indian took the first set 21-12 in just 16 minutes.
The second set had class written all over it as Sindhu opened up a nine-point lead before Ayustine earned her first point. The Indonesian picked three points in a row after that but at the break Sindhu was still leading 11-3.
Sindhu started off from where she had left and picked seven successive points to lead 18-3 at one point.
Ayustine had herself to blame though for the one-sided set, with a number of her returns landing on the net while she had no answer to Sindhu’s neat placements.
It took just 14 minutes for Sindhu to take the second set as well.
Sindhu had drubbed 33rd ranked Denmark’s Mette Poulsen 21-10, 21-11 in the first round.
Saina Nehwal and HS Prannoy will take the courts later in the day. Nehwal will face Germany’s Fabienne Deprez while Prannoy takes on China’s seventh seed Tian Houwei.
Earlier on Wednesday, Saina Nehwal beat defending champion Nozomi Okuhara of Japan to enter the second round. Eight-seeded Saina defeated Okuhara 21-15, 21-14 to improve her head-to-head record to 6-1 against her Japanese opponent.