India’s ace shuttler Saina Nehwal has crashed out of Hong Kong Super Series badminton championship. The Indian National champion lost to speedy and fit No 8 seed, Chen Yufei of China 18-21, 21-19 21-10, in what was the first meeting between the two players.
Nehwal made a decent start to the match, winning the first set and looked like another convincing win the Indian, however, once the Chinese teenager adjusted to the Indian’s wiles, she fought back and from then onwards, the teenager never looked like losing a set.
Saina gave tough fight but wasn’t enough, fit, young Chinese was too much to handle as Yufei reeled her in slowly but steadily.
Earlier, world no.10 HS Prannoy crashed to his third consecutive defeat at the hands of Kazumasa Sakai, having earlier lost to the 27-year-old Japanese in the 2013 and 2017 editions of the Indonesia Open Superseries Premier.
The sole Indian to enter the quarter-finals of the $400,000 prize money tournament is Olympic silver medalist Saina Nehwal as she convincingly defeated Japanese and former Asian junior champion Aya Ohori 21-14,21-17 to book her place in the quarter-final of the tournament where she will face another Japanese in Yamaguchi.
The fifth seed Yamaguchi and Sindhu have faced each other once earlier this year, where the world no.2 suffered a humiliating defeat 14-21, 9-21 in the French Open, however, Sindhu still leads their head-to-head 3-1.