Treesa, Gayatri enter semifinals

Birmingham, March 17

The Indian pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand continued its impressive run, dishing out another superlative performance to advance to its second successive semifinals at the All England Championships here today.

The world No. 17 pair looked solid in defence and relentless in attack on the way to claiming a 21-14 18-21 21-12 win over the Chinese pair of Li Wen Mei and Liu Xuan Xuan in a

64-minute quarterfinal.

Gayatri and Treesa will next face South Korea’s Baek Ha Na and Lee So Hee, who defeated the eighth-seeded Indonesian pair of Apriyani Rahayu and Siti Fadia Silva Ramadhanti 21-11 14-21 21-14.

Taking on the world No. 52 pair, Gayatri stood solid at the net while Treesa came up with delectable smashes and drops from the back to dominate the proceedings in the rallies.

With coach Mathias Boe and Arun Vishnu constantly chirping from the sidelines, the Indian pair displayed aggressive intent from the start. Gayatri and Treesa got a measure of their opponents quickly and constructed the points well to take the first game comfortably.

After the change of sides, they kept a firm grip on the rallies to lead 10-6 but Mei and Xuan soon found their bearings to take the match into the decider.

In the third game, it was one-way traffic as the Indian pair reeled off six points on the trot to gallop to an 8-1 lead. They were charged up as their shot selection and on-court judgements were spot on. The Chinese tried to slow down the pace but the Indians’ relentless attack helped them seal the match.