April 18, 2013
TAIPEI: Rising Indian shuttler PV Sindhu pulled off an upset victory over former world No. 1 Shixian Wang of China to storm into the women's singles quarterfinals of the Badminton Asia Championship on Thursday.
April 18, 2013
TAIPEI: Rising Indian shuttler PV Sindhu pulled off an upset victory over former world No. 1 Shixian Wang of China to storm into the women's singles quarterfinals of the Badminton Asia Championship on Thursday.
PV Sindhu beat the third seeded Chinese 15-21, 21-14, 22-20 in a marathon match.
World number 16 Sindhu, who is the lone Indian woman in the fray in the absence of star compatriot Saina Nehwal, came back from a game down to win 15-21, 21-14, 22-20 in a tense contest.
It took the unseeded Indian an hour and two minutes to overcome the current world No. 6 Chinese in what was their first-ever encounter.
Sindhu will take on seventh seed Eriko Hirose of Japan in the last-eight stage of the competition.
The 17-year-old Hyderabadi, who has earned the reputation of being a giant-killer, turned out to be more aggressive than her fancied opponent as she went on to hit 14 smash winners as opposed to the 10 hit by the third seeded Wang.
Earlier, in the second round of the men's singles event, Kashyap got the better of Han Chou Chu of Taipei 21-17, 21-19 in 31 minutes.
He will play his third round match later on Thursday against 15th seeded Huan Gao of China.
Sai Praneeth B, however, failed to cross the second round hurdle, going down 15-21, 16-21 to sixth seeded Zhengming Wang in 36 minutes.
Meanwhile, India's campaign came to an end in doubles category after the women's pair of Ashwini Ponnappa and Pradnya Gadre lost the second round match against Lok Yan Poon and Ying Suet Tse of Hong Kong 15-21, 11-21 in just 26 minutes.
On Wednesday, all other Indian combinations in men's, women's and mixed doubles categories had already lost their respective first round ties.
Courtesy: PTI
