Saina, B Sai Praneeth crash out; India’s challenge ends at the Macau Open

TIL Desk Sports/ Top seed Saina Nehwal and B Sai Praneeth crashed out in their respective quarterfinal matches to draw curtains on India’s challenge ends at the Macau Open Grand Prix Gold badminton tournament, here today. Both Saina and Sai Praneeth suffered straight-game losses against Chinese opponents in the women’s and men’s singles quarterfinals respectively.

Former World No.1 Saina, who is slowly trying to come back to her best after recovering from a major knee injury which affected her Olympic campaign, found the going tough today, going down 17-21 17-21 lower-ranked Zhang Yiman of China in the women’s singles quarterfinal in a 35-minute clash. Later in the day Sai Praneeth toiled hard for half an hour before losing 19-21 9-21 to Jun Peng Zhao.

Saina, who improved a place yesterday in the world rankings to be at number 10, seemed to have been affected by the gruelling three-game matches that she played in the last two rounds here. 19-year-old Zhang, who is ranked at World No. 226, took the early 4-2 lead and then held a slender 9-8 at one stage. The young Chinese soon reeled off five straight points to jump to a 14-8 lead and kept marching ahead as Saina lost the opening game.