Indian badminton ace Ajay Jayaram, who survived the first round carnage at the $600, 000 Celcom Axiata Malaysia Open Superseries Premier, advanced to the quarter-finals of this tournament by stunning the fourth seed and World No. 2 Viktor Axelsen at Kuching, Malaysia on Thursday.
The India No. 1 men's singles shuttler was blown away by the reigning India Open champion in the opening game but the World No. 20 bounced back in style from there and edged the Dane, 9-21, 21-14, 21-19 in a 44-minute battle.
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He will now meet the fifth seed Son Wan Ho for a place in the semi-finals. The Korean had not been in the best of form of late and was shocked by Sameer Verma in the first round of the India Open last week.
Saina, Sindhu crashed out in the first round
Jayaram is the only Indian who made it to the second round of the season's second Superseries Premier tournament after the rest of the Indian contingent crashed out on Wednesday.
Most shocking of them all was the newly-crowned India Open women’s singles champion PV Sindhu’s first round loss. She was two points away from the victory before squandering the advantage to the junior world champion Chen Yufei to go down 21-18, 19-21, 17-21.
The other Indian shuttle queen Saina Nehwal also crashed out on the same day, losing 21-19, 13-21, 15-21 to the fourth seed Akane Yamaguchi.
Later in the day, B Sai Praneeth put up a gutsy fight against the seventh seed and two-time Olympic champion Lin Dan only to meet with a 21-18, 19-21, 18-21 defeat in the end.
Ajay, in contrast, had notched up a comfortable 21-11, 21-8 win over the 23rd ranked Qiao Bin of China to set up a second round clash with Axelsen.
Considering that he lost just last week in the first round to the in-form Danish ace in straight games, this was a remarkable turnaround by the 29-year-old. That said, Ajay did win two out of the four matches that they have played prior to this latest showdown and he definitely sought inspiration from those performances.
He was tied with Axelsen at 13-13 and then at 18-18 in the hard-fought decider from where the Indian accelerated to the finish line for the massive win.
