All England Championships: Saina Nehwal joins PV Sindhu in quarterfinals, HS Prannoy bows out

Birmingham: Ace Indian shuttlers PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal on Thursday stormed into the quarterfinals of the All England Open Badminton Championships after their straight-game victories over their respective opponents in the women’s singles event in Birmingham. Both Sindhu and Saina are in the top half of the women’s singles and if they win their respective quarterfinal matches, they will face each other in a mouth-watering clash in the semifinals. [caption id=“attachment_3321422” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Saina Nehwal. AFP[/caption] However in the men’s singles, HS Prannoy suffered a 13-21 5-21 loss to seventh seeded Chinese Tian Houwei in 33 minutes to crash out of the tournament. Sindhu, a silver medallist at the Rio Olympics, dished out a dominating game to trounce Indonesia’s Dinar Dyah Ayustine 21-12 21-4 in just 30 minutes. The sixth seeded Indian will face the winner of the match between World No. 1 Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei and Japan’s Minatsu Mitani in the quarterfinals. Sindhu and Ayustine were tied at 4-4 initially but after that the Indian broke off and left her opponent far behind to go one game up. In the second game, Sindhu opened up a 9-0 lead early on and never looked back against her Indonesian opponent to easily clinched her second round match. London Olympics bronze medallist Saina also notched up a comfortable 21-18 21-10 win over Germany’s Fabienne Deprez in 35 minutes. The eighth seeded Indian will face the winner of the match between third seed Sung Ji Hyun of Korea and Yip Pui Yin of Hong Kong in the quarterfinals. World No. 10 Saina had defeated defending champion Nozomi Okuhara of Japan 21-15 21-14 in the opening round late last night. In the second round match against Deprez on Thursday, Saina opened up a 12-8 lead at one stage but her opponent make a come back by levelling the score to 17-17. Saina, however, held onto her nerves to win the first game 21-18. In the second game, Saina was more ruthless and she surged ahead from 1-1 onwards, never to give her opponent a chance to come back into the match.