Indian shuttlers have a good day in Hong Kong

hong kong — Indians enjoyed a good outing at the ongoing Hong Kong Open badminton tournament with P.V. Sindhu, Saina Nehwal, Ajay Jayaram and Sameer Verma winning their respective singles matches here on Thursday.

In the women’s singles, Sindhu defeated Hsu Ya Ching of Taiwan 21-10, 21-14 in 36 minutes while Saina faced a much more difficult task against Sayaka Sato of Japan before prevailing 21-18, 9-21, 21-16 in 51 minutes.

In the men’s singles, Jayaram beat China’s Huang Yuxiang 2118, 21-19 while Verma won 1921, 21-15, 21-11 over Kazumasa Sakai of Japan in 53 minutes.

However, H.S. Prannoy crashed out of the men’s singles competition after going down fighting to Chong Wei Feng of Malaysia here on Thursday.

Prannoy started off on a promising note at the Hong Kong Coliseum before going down 21-15, 11-21, 15-21 over 58 minutes in the second round encounter.

Sindhu, who had won the China Open a few days ago, was off to a poor start with Ching taking an early 4-1 lead. But the Olympic bronze medallist soon recovered to level the scores before winning five consecutive points to lead 9-5.

The Hyderabad shuttler continued to push home her dominance, building on the advantage with another five-point streak before clinching the first game with four back to back points.