Today was a hard day for Indian shuttlers at Australian Open. World No. 1 Saina continued her rampaging run in world badminton and staved off a challenge from Sun 21-19, 19-21, 21-14 in a match that lasted an hour and 18 minutes in the women’s singles competition. It was a hard fought match against Chinese Sun Yu seeded 9 worldwide. She made her way to the next round where she is going to take on the Olympic bronze medallist, two-time All England champion Shixian Wang, against whom Saina has a close 6-5 record in 11 meetings. P.V. Sindhu too crashed out of the game as she lost her very first round from former world no.1 Yihan Wang. P.V. Sindhu has dropped to world no.14 as according to BWF. Talking about Men’s singles, world no. 4 Kidambi Srikanth bowed out of the USD 750,000 Australian Open Super series today after losing his second round match to unseeded Chinese Tian Houwei. The Indian shuttler lost 21-18, 17-21, 13-21. It was his second round as he accomplished his win in his first round over Hans-Kristian Vittinghus, surprising everyone. In men’s singles, though Kidambi Srikanth maintained his position at No.4, Commonwealth Games Champions Parupalli Kashyap and H.S. Prannoy both rose one place to No.12 and No.14, respectively. The fourth seeds beat Jwala and Ashwini 21-14, 21-10 in 32 minutes in the women’s doubles second round to proceed to the quarter-finals. Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa made a jump of three places to be ranked at No.18 in women’s doubles. Saina had made it to the next round in the Australian Open and remains the only Indian to represent in the Super Series and we wish her all the luck.
