It ebbed, it flowed, and it finally ended in favour of fourth seed PV Sindhu, who defeated the 13th seed Ngan Yi Cheung 19-21, 23-21, 21-17 in 87 minutes to reach the quarter-final at the BWF Badminton World Championships in Glasgow on Thursday.

In a wildly unpredictable women’s singles draw, this match was never going to be an easy one for Sindhu and it was evident from the first game. No player won more than three points on the trot, as the match edged back and forth. The biggest lead either player had was two points, and at the end of it, Cheung pulled away 21-19 to take a 1-0 lead as Sindhu could not get her lengths right.

The second game started well for the two-time Worlds bronze medallist from India, who took a 6-3 lead with the rallies increasing in length, helping her to find rhythm. The errors then started creeping in to Sindhu’s game as the Hong Kong shuttler pulled away to a crucial 16-13 lead. Typical of the see-saw nature of the match, Sindhu then went ahead 20-17 before Cheung saved three game points. The sequence went 20-20, 21-20, 21-21, 22-21, and 23-21 finally in favour of Sindhu.

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With Cheung looking deflated by that, Sindhu then ran into a 11-3 lead in the decider. But the world No. 17 from Singapore was not done yet. She won 8 of the next 9 points, to make it 12-12. Finally, however Sindhu emerged victorious.

She will now face China’s Sun Yu in the quarter-final. The sixth seed has a favourable head-to-head record against Sindhu, winning four of their seven meetings.

In the other matches of the day, Kidambi Srikanth pulled off a routine win to reach the quarter-final. You can find the detailed report here. It was curtains for Ajay Jayaram in the singles and Pranaav Jerry Chopra and Sikki Reddy in the mixed doubles. The former lost to Olympic champion in straight games, while the Indian duo lost to the seventh seeds Jordan and Susanto from Indonesia.