Birmingham: Indian ace shuttler Saina Nehwal had a winning start at the All England Championship as she thrashed her Thai competitor Sapisree to reach the pre-quarterfinal of the tournament on Thursday.
Saina took a brilliant start in the match by winning the first set with the margin of 21-8 in just 11 minutes. But in the second set, she had a tough time against Sapisree as the Thai did well to win the second set with the slender margin of 21-18. Saina started well but after the 4-4 score-line, she was looking a bit scratchy and that gave Sapisree a chance to get back and she went on to win the second match.
Third and final set was completely action packed as both the shuttlers were trying their level best to wrap up the game, but it was Saina who had a last laugh by winning the 53 minute long game with a score line of 21-16. Saina was trailing with 4-5 in the first half of final set but she bounced back well to end on the winning note.
Saina and Sapisree had played four times before this match and Saina has always dominated her Thai opponent. Saina will now take on winner of the match between Belaetrix Manuputi and Minatsu Mitani in the pre-quarterfinals of the USD 400,000 badminton tournament here.
However, bad news for Indian fans came when in mixed doubles pair of Tarun Kona and Ashwini Ponnappa lost to Fran Kuyrniawan and Shendy Puspa Irawati. Akshay Dewalkar and Pradnya Gadre also lost the plot in their opening match and they ended losing by 8-21 13-21 to Malaysian Duo Jian Guo Ong and Yin Loo Lim in another match.
On a day of upsets, former world number one Yihan Wang and Olympic Champion and top seed Li Xuerui crashed out with defeats in the opening round itself.
By ISN