SaarLorLux Open 2018: Subhankar Dey stuns Lin Dan; Parupalli Kashyap enters quarter-finals

The Indian contingent had a memorable outing on Day 3 of the SaarLorLux Open 2018 as Subhankar Dey stunned the top seed Lin Dan to enter the quarter-finals of this Super 100 tournament in Saarbrucken, Germany. The 64th ranked Dey held his nerves to secure a narrow 22-20, 21-19 win over the two-time Olympic champion in 45 minutes.

This was the ninth pre-quarter-final defeat in the last 10 tournaments for the struggling Chinese legend, whose ranking has now nosedived to 13th.

Dey will next face the seventh seed Toby Penty of England for a place in the semi-finals.

2014 Commonwealth Games champion Parupalli Kashyap also joined Dey in the last-eight stage of this tournament. The eighth seed made short work of Germany’s Alexander Roovers 21-14, 21-12 to set up a quarter-final clash with World No. 61 Toma Junior Popov.

In women’s singles, Saili Rane continues her fine run this week. The World No. 114 prevailed over Russia’s Anastasiia Semenova 21-12, 21-8 in just 26 minutes. Up next for her is the fifth seed Line Hojmark Kjaersfeldt of Denmark.

Meanwhile, India’s doubles challenge came to an end on Thursday with twin men’s doubles defeats. Hellas Open champions MR Arjun and Shlok Ramchandran went down fighting 16-21, 18-21 to the Chinese pair of Huang Kaixiang and Wang Zekang.

Arun George and Sanyam Shukla also bowed out in a 19-21, 16-21 loss to the fourth-seeded Germans Mark Lamsfuss and Marvin Emil Seidel.

Indian campaign ends at Macau Open

At the Super 300 tournament going on this week in Macau City -- the Macau Open, the Indian campaign came to an end after the lone survivor Rituparna Das made a second round exit. The former Indian national women’s singles champion was beaten 8-21, 21-15, 7-21 by the fifth seed Han Yue of China.

Das has been making a comeback to the tour following an injury break.