Eye on the target

India’s Lakshya Sen stunned world No. 2 Jonatan Christie of Indonesia in a superlative display to enter the men’s singles quarterfinals of the All England Championships here on Thursday. Lakshya just took 36 minutes to beat Christie 21-13 21-10. The win bettered Lakshay’s head-to-head record against Christie to 3-4. This was the first time Lakshya played Christie, seeded third in this event, after the Paris Olympics.

Lakshya dominated Christie from the word go in a fluent show of skills. The Indian used his energy and superb court coverage to fox the Indonesian.

Malvika ousted

Even as Lakshya stormed into the quarterfinals, India’s women’s singles campaign ended with Malvika Bansod losing in straight games against two-time world champion Akane Yamaguchi of Japan in the pre-quarterfinals. The world No. 3 Yamaguchi hardly broke a sweat to get the better of world No. 28 Malvika 21-16 21-13 in a contest that lasted just 33 minutes.

Yamaguchi has now extended her head-to-head record against Malvika to 4-0.

Malvika struggled to adjust to the conditions, repeatedly hitting wide, long or into the net to fall behind early.

Despite a few unforced errors of her own, Yamaguchi seized the advantage.

The Indian shuttler managed to stay within striking distance till 13-15, but Yamaguchi soon surged ahead, earning a slew of game points before sealing the opening game.

The Japanese started the second game strongly but Malvika fought back to

level scores at 8-8. However, her inconsistency returned, allowing Yamaguchi to go into the interval with a comfortable lead.

There was little resistance from Malvika after the change of ends as Yamaguchi raced ahead, earning eight match points. She closed out the contest with a smash on her second opportunity. On Wednesday, two-time Olympics medallist PV Sindhu crashed out of the women’s singles event.

Back issue

Seventh seed Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty conceded their pre-quarterfinal match against Hao Nan Xie and Wei Han Zeng of China midway after the Indian pair was trailing 16-21 2-2 due to a past back injury of Chirag that flared up.

Chirag said the injury flared up after Wednesday’s match but he just wanted to give it a go. “I had some pain from yesterday’s match. I have been wearing a brace for the past week for my disc but it increased during yesterday’s first game actually. It was quite unbearable for me to move around. We thought we will see for the first 10 points but it was too difficult to play,” he said.

Rankireddy said he got to know about Chirag’s problem just before Thursday’s match but agreed with his partner’s decision to concede the match. “Tough times, I felt we are in a very comfortable position. Even he (Chirag) was trying from the first day but he didn’t tell me, so we he was just playing with the pain. Before the match he told me and said we will see and I said no worries, this is not the end of the life. May be not this year, next year for sure,” Rankireddy said.

The duo had defeated Denmark’s Daniel Lundgaard and Mads Vestergaard 21-17 21-15 late Wednesday.