New Delhi: Parupalli Kashyap, Sameer Verma and the mixed doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa entered the India Open badminton tournament’s quarterfinals here on Thursday.
Kashyap defeated compatriot Shreyansh Jaiswal 21-19, 19-21, 21-12.
However, second seeded Srikanth Kidambi suffered a humiliating loss to Iskandar Zulkarnain of Malaysia. Srikanth lost in straight games 19-21, 17-21.
Coming back after recovering from a shoulder injury, Sameer overcame former world No.3 Indonesia’s Tommy Sugiarto 21-18, 19-21, 21-17.
Later, Olympic champion Carolina Marin overcame a scare from Chinese teenager Gao Fangjie to enter the quarterfinals. In one of the longest matches of the tournament that lasted an hour and 23 minutes, Marin had to use all her experience to down the China Open runner-up 15-21, 21-15, 21-11.
Saina Nehwal and P. V. Sindhu too won their second round matches, with ease.
Top seed Sindhu dispatched Bulgaria’s Linda Zetchiri 21-10, 21-14.
Fourth seeded Saina did not break much sweat as she sailed past Denmark’s Line Hojmark Kjaersfeldt with a 21-12, 21-11 scoreline.
Seed No.3 Ratchanok Intanon of Thailand also moved into the quarterfinals, with a 21-11, 21-12 win over Aakarshi Kashyap of India while fifth seeded Beiwan Zhang of USA defeated Mugdha Agrey 21-12, 21-16 in another second round match.
In the mixed doubles, unseeded Satwik and Ashwini stunned third seeds Malaysia’s Tan Kian Meng and Lai Pei Jing 21-16, 15-21, 23-21.
Eighth seeds Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N. Sikki Reddy also entered the quarters, beating the Indo-Malaysian pair of Prajakta Sawant and Yogendran Khrishnan 21-10, 21-19 in 32 minutes but Rohan Kapoor and Kuhoo Garg lost 10-21, 11-21 to fifth seeds Mathias Christiansen and Christinna Pedersen of Denmark.
Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy too progressed to the men’s doubles last eight stage with a 21-11, 21-15 win over Tushar Sharma and Chandrabhusan Tripathi.
Results
