HS Prannoy stunned the legendary Lin Dan of China, while Saina Nehwal cruised past Dinar Dyah Ayustine to advance to the second round of the Indonesia Open badminton tournament on Tuesday.
Sai Praneeth, however, could not join his compatriots in the second round as he was defeated by Chinese Taipei’s Wang Tzu Wei in straight games for the second time in the last seven days. Wang won the match 21-10, 21-13 to prevent an all-Indian second-round match between Prannoy and Praneeth.
This was Prannoy’s second win over two-time Olympic champion Lin Dan in three meetings. The Indian world No 13 was on top for most of the match but for the second game, as he won 21-15, 9-21, 21-14 in an hour.
Both shuttlers started the match at each other’s throats and it was tight till 12-12 in the first game, before a string of unforced errors from Lin handed Prannoy the lead. The second game was a reversal of the first, as it was now Prannoy’s turn to commit too many mistakes, which Lin lapped up and forced a decider.
The Chinese had the momentum going into the third game but it was Prannoy who found another gear and maintained a narrow lead over his opponent till 15-13, before he broke free and sealed the match.
Nehwal had no trouble against Ayustine, coming through in 35 minutes to set up a second-round clash against Chinese fifth seed Chen Yufei. Sameer Verma scraped past Rasmus Gemke of Denmark 21-9, 12-21, 22-20 in a match lasting a little over an hour. He will take on either world champion Viktor Axelsen or local Jonatan Christie in the second round.
It was curtains for Indian men’s doubles pair Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, who lost to Japan’s Hiroyuki Endo and Yuta Watanabe in straight games 21-8, 21-15. Women’s doubles pair of Jakkampudi Meghana and Poorvisha S Ram also went down to the Indonesian pair of Agatha Imanuela and Siti Fadia Silva Ramadhanti 11-21, 18-21.
PV Sindhu, K Srikanth, Vaishnavi Reddy Jakka, Manu Atri and Sumeeth Reddy, and Pranaav Jerry Chopra and Sikki Reddy will start their campaigns on Wednesday.
With inputs from PTI
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