Saina, Srikanth post impressive wins
NANJING, CHINA: Top Indian shuttlers Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth notched up comfortable victories over their respective opponents to make an impressive start at the BWF World Championship on Tuesday.
Saina, who won a silver and bronze in the earlier editions of the championship, defeated Turkey’s Aliye Demirbag 21-17, 21-8 in the second round to set up a pre-quarter-final clash with 2013 champion Ratchanok Inthanon of Thailand. The Olympic medallist Indian had received a bye in the first round.
Fifth seed Srikanth dispatched Ireland’s Nhat Nguyen 21-15, 21-16 in his opener to join compatriots HS Prannoy, Sameer Verma and B Sai Praneeth, who received a walkover as his opponent Korea’s Son Wan Ho pulled out. “It was a good first outing for me. My body feels good and that is all that matters to me, not thinking about anything else,” said Srikanth.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa staved off a challenge from 15th seeded German pair of Mark Lamsfuss and Isabel Herttrich, registering a 10-21, 21-17, 21-18 win to enter the mixed doubles pre-quarters.
“We got a lot of service errors, so don’t know how it works. We are just happy to pull it off,” said Ashwini, who later paired up with N Sikki Reddy in the women’s doubles to beat the Taipei duo of Chiang Kai Hsin and Hung Shih Han 19-21, 21-10, 21-17.
In another women’s doubles tie, Meghana Jakkampudi and Poorvisha S Ram bowed out losing to the Dutch duo of Debora Jille and Imke van der Aar 15-21, 21-19, 18-21.
Russian Open silver medallists Rohan Kapoor and Kuhoo Garg also went down 12-21, 12-21 against English sixth seeded husband-wife duo of Chris Adcock and Gabrielle Adcock in another mixed doubles second-round tie.
TAI RALLIES
Top-ranked Tai Tzu Ying of Taiwan beat Australian Hsuan-yu Chen 21-10, 21-16.
Tai trailed 11-9 at the break in the second game before winning 12 of the next 17 points to clinch victory.
Fourth-seeded Intanon earned a comeback win, beating Denmark’s Mia Blichfeldt 16-21, 22-20, 21-10.
Olympic champion and twotime winner Carolina Marin easily beat Thailand’s Busanan Ongbamrungphan 21-9, 21-8.
The 13th-seeded Michelle Li of Canada was upset 21-23, 21-12, 23-21 by Thuy Linh Nguyen of Vietnam.