BAC: Sindhu, Prannoy, Doubles pair ousted, India’s campaign ends
This was Sindhu’s first loss against the Chinese shuttler in six meetings.
Top Indian shuttler PV Sindhu failed to get past her poor form and got knocked out in the opening round of the ongoing China Open tournament. The world number 6 encountered a shocking and unexpected defeat from world number 42 Pai Yu-po of Chinese Taipei on Tuesday.
Sindhu has now made early exits from China, Korea and Denmark Open. In the match against Yu-po, she lost 13-21, 21-18, 19-21 in an encounter which lasted as many as 74 minutes.
Sindhu lost the first game without giving much of a fight to her opponent but came back strongly to take the second game where she showed her class but failed to sustain her top game till the third set.
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In the deciding game of the match, Sindhu was trailing at the halfway mark and even tried to reduce the deficit but eventually, her lower-ranked opponent won the game and consequently the match.
It is worth highlighting that Sindhu has now failed to reach the finals in four consecutive tournaments after her gold medal-winning run at the World Championships in Basel.
In the men’s singles category of the event, HS Prannoy, who made a comeback to professional badminton after recovering from dengue, failed to proceed to the second round and lost the opening round 17-21, 18-21 to Denmark’s Rasmus Gemke.
In contrast to these results, the Indian duo of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa defeated the Canadian pair of Joshua Hurlburt-Yu and Josephine Wu 21-19, 21-19 to advance to the next round of the mixed doubles category.
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