Indian challenge ends at China Open
After showing much promise in the earlier rounds, the Indian challenge fizzled out at the $700,000 China Open as PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth lost their respective quarter-finals in Fuzhou on Friday.
Sindhu yet again struggled to move past Chinese eighth seed He Bingjiao as she lost 17-21, 21-17, 15-21 in an hour and nine minutes. It was her third loss to Bingjiao in 2018 after going down in Indonesia and France in July and October. The Chinese world No.7 now holds an 8-5 record against Sindhu.
The left-handed Bingjiao controlled the rallies at the start by executing her strokes perfectly and used her deft touch to outwit Sindhu. Sindhu frittered away an 8-3 advantage to lose the opening game. However, Sindhu made a roaring comeback in the second game before losing the decider despite a late charge.
In the decider, Bingjiao was more sure footed than Sindhu as she executed her plan well to take an 11-6 advantage at the interval. The Chinese managed to eke out a 15-8 lead before Sindhu produced a late charge to claw back to 15-16.
But Bingjiao didn’t give any chance to the Indian after that as she reeled off the remaining points to cement her place in the semi-finals.
Later, Srikanth paid the price for being too erratic as he lost 14-21, 14-21 in 35 minutes to world No.3 Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei in men’s singles.
World No.9 Srikanth never seemed to pose a challenge to his Chinese Taipei opponent, who won titles in Germany, Singapore and South Korea this year.
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Indian men’s doubles pairing of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty put up a strong fight before going down 11-21, 21-16, 12-21 in 42 minutes against former world champions Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan of Indonesia.
Despite being overwhelming underdogs, the Indian duo still managed to take a game off against their much experienced opponents.