Birthday girl Sindhu enter quarterfinals of Indonesia Open

Jakarta, July 5

Olympic silver medallist P V Sindhu celebrated her 23^rd birthday with a straight-game win over Japan’s Aya Ohori, while H S Prannoy eked out a three-game victory over Wang Tzu Wei of Chinese Taipei to enter the quarterfinals of the USD 1,250,000 Indonesia Open here on Thursday.

World No. 3 Sindhu, who had reached the semifinals at Malaysia Open last week, didn’t break much sweat as she defeated Ohori, ranked 17^th, 21-17 21-14 in a 36-minute women’s singles match. This is Sindhu’s fifth win over the Japanese in as many meetings.

The Indian will face either Thailand’s Busanan Ongbamrungphan or China’s He Bingjiao next.

Prannoy then recovered from an opening game loss to outwit Wang 21-23 21-15 21-13 in an entertaining men’s singles contest that lasted an hour here. He is likely to meet third seed and All England champion Shi Yuqi of China.

However, Olympic medallist Saina Nehwal couldn’t get past fifth seed Chen Yufei, losing 18-21 15-21 to the World No. 5 Chinese in a 40-minute contest. Interestingly, Saina had defeated Chen at the same venue during the Indonesia Masters early in the year.

Sameer Verma, who had won the Swiss Open this year, also failed to put much of a fight against World No. 1 Viktor Axelsen, going down 15-21 14-21 to the reigning World Champion from Denmark.

Earlier, Prannoy had made good recovery after world no 17 Wang opened up a 14-10 lead in the opening game. The Indian narrowed the deficit down to 13-14 with the help of two good-looking smashes and a quick return to serve.

Wang again curved out a 17-14 advantage with a cross court smash. Prannoy gained two more points at the net and clawed back at 19-19 after Wang went out. Another precise return at the back line handed him a game point but he squandered it.

Prannoy made a judgemental error and miscued a net return before a lucky net chord helped Wang to pocket the opening game.

Prannoy upped his game after the change of ends and moved to a 11-8 lead after Wang found the net. The Indian extended his lead to 17-12 with few swift returns. Eventually two successive net errors by Wang helped Prannoy to bounce back in the contest.

In the decider, Prannoy was more aggressive as he zoomed to a 10-2 lead but also made few easy errors to allow Wang claw back t0 5-10 before a mistimed shot at the net by the Chinese Taipei shuttler gave Prannoy a healthy 11-5 lead at the break.

The Indian continued to rule the roast after the breather as he led 19-13.

Wang hit wide and next failed to return another angled return from Prannoy to hand over the match to the Indian.

Earlier, Sindhu erased an early 0-3 deficit to surge to 10-8 and 16-12 lead and held on to her own despite a charge from Ohori.

In the second game, the Indian produced a more dominating display as she moved to a 10-3 advantage and consolidated it to grab a 17-8 lead.

Ohori narrowed the lead to 12-17 but Sindhu soon shut the door comfortably. PTI