India suffered back-to-back blows at the 2015 Japan Open Superseries as PV Sindhu lost her opening round match to Minatsu Mitani of Japan 13-21 21-17 11-21 in 59 minutes on Wednesday.
The first game saw the Japanese take total control of proceedings as she raced away to an 8-1 lead, thereby putting huge pressure on the Indian. Despite trying her best to make a comeback, Sindhu failed to take the upper hand and eventually lost the opening game 13-21.
In the second game, however, the 20-year-old Indian fought back into the match, taking a 5-3 lead after the opening 8 points and continued to chip away with the points to eventually seal the game 21-17 and take the match into a decider.
The decider proved to an absolute dominance on the part of the Japanese shuttler as she took the game away from the Indian from the 4-4 mark, winning 9 points at a stretch to go 13-4 up and the maintained that lead throughout to progress through top the second round and knock the two-time World Championships bronze medalist out of the competition.
The loss extends the run of poor form that Sindhu has ben encountering in the year 2015 and there is now doubt that if she has make the cut at the 2016 Rio Olympics, then she will need to strike some form very soon.
Final Scoreline – Minatsu Mitani(JPN) beat PV Sindhu 13-21 21-17 11-21