China Open 2018: PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth work hard to reach quarter-finals

PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth were both made to work hard for their quarter-final berths as the second round wrapped up at the China Open 2018 in Changzhou, China on Thursday.

The third seeded Sindhu had never lost a match to Thailand’s World No. 24 Busanan Ongbamrungphan in eight previous meetings, but the Indian took a long time to find her feet and get back her rhythm during their ninth showdown. When Sindhu looked to have the edge at 18-15 in the opener, she allowed the Thai to come back and level matters at 19-19.

She then squandered two game points to gift the first game to Ongbamrungphan, who needed just one to wrap things up at 23-21.

Sindhu looked more assured of herself and made much less errors from the second game. From 6-1, she jumped to 14-8. As Busanan struggled to find her accuracy, Sindhu raced through the game to take it 21-13.

The two were locked in a tie in the early stages of the decider but the Indian started attacking the corners and distanced herself from her opponent soon after, to go up to 14-9. It was at 16-11 that the complexion of the match changed and it became a highly competitive affair again as the Indian started making a flurry of errors.

It galvanized Ongbamrungphan who took six consecutive points to snatch the lead from Sindhu and go up to 17-16. But right then, Sindhu upped her level and forced her opponent to commit mistakes under pressure that helped her close out the 21-23, 21-13, 21-18 win in 1 hour 9 minutes.

Srikanth, seeded seventh at this tournament, had a breezy time against the World No. 23 Suppanyu Avihingsanon in the first game. He never conceded his lead at any point and bagged it 21-12.

It was a completely different scene thereafter as Srikanth lacked in precision and Avihingsanon simply grew more and more confident. The closest Srikanth could get to was when he trailed by three points at 15-18. The Thai did not allow any more room to the Indian and quickly set up a decider by winning the second game 21-15.

Srikanth flew to a 4-0 lead in the decider and then extended the advantage to 11-7 at the time of the mid-game interval. The match looked far from over as a rejuvenated Avihingsanon came back from the break to take seven points in a row and inch ahead to 14-11.

It was then the former World No. 1’s time to fight back and pocket five points in a row from 13-15 to go up to 18-15.

There was more drama in store as he could not convert any of his three match points. Avihingsanon stormed back from 17-20 to equalize at 20-20 and then had a match point of his own, which he was not able to make any use of.

While Srikanth saved it, the spirited Avihingsanon showed a lot of resilience to save a fourth match point. It was finally on his fifth match point that the Indian was able to pull off a 21-12, 15-21, 24-22 win at the end of a 63-minute battle.

India’s doubles campaign ends

While the singles stars did manage to win after toiling hard, the doubles stars did not have the same fortunes. With all the three remaining pairs losing their second round matches, India’s doubles campaign came to an end at this Super 1000 tournament.

The mixed doubles combine of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa went down fighting 14-21, 11-21 to the top seeds Zheng Siwei and Huang Yaqiong of China. The pair of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N Sikki Reddy made a fine start and led for a part of the first game only to surrender 16-21, 10-21 to the sixth seeds Mathias Christiansen and Christinna Pedersen.

The men’s doubles pair of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy, who are enjoying a good run of form of late, too could not do much against the Chinese Taipei duo of Chen Hung Ling and Wang Chi-Lin. The national champions were outplayed 9-21, 10-21 in 24 minutes.