Sindhu in Swiss quarters; Saina starts with win too

Basel, March 13: World No.9 P.V. Sindhu reached the quarterfinals while Saina Nehwal won her opening round match in women’s singles at the $125,000 Swiss Open Grand Prix Gold here on Thursday.

Sindhu fought hard for 54 minutes to beat World No.23 Michelle Li of Canada in three hardfought games. The final score was 19-21, 21-16, 2111 in favour of the lanky Hyderabadi. She will face world No.3 Shixian Wang of China in the last eight clash.

Meanwhile, London Olympics bronze medallist Saina opened her campaign with a straight game win over qualifier Chisato Hoshi of Japan. The sixth seeded Indian beat her Japanese opponent 21-12, 21-12 in 34 minutes to progress to the second round.

Saina dropped a place world rankings to No.8 due to her loss in the All England Championship last week.

World number 36 Anand Pawar squandered a first game advantage to suffer a 21-14, 12- 21, 12-21 defeat against Chinese Taipei’s Tien Chen Chou in a 51minute men’s singles match. This was Anand’s third defeat to Chou. He had lost to the Taiwanese shuttler in German Open this year.

Pawar had fended off the challenge from another German Tobias Wadenka 21-11, 21-4 in the second round.

Top Indian male shuttler P. Kashyap eased into the third round. The third seed Indian took 33 minutes to dispose off Lukas Schmidt of Germany 21-15, 21-14 last night to secure his place in the pre-quarterfinals of the men’s singles event. — PTI