Sindhu, Saina in quarterfinals of All England Badminton

TIL Desk Sports/ Ace Indian shuttlers P V Sindhu and Saina Nehwal stormed into the quarterfinals of the All England Open Badminton Championships after their straight-game victories over their respective opponents in the women’s singles event here. Both Sindhu and Saina are in the top half of the women’s singles and if they win their respective quarterfinal matches, they will face each other in a mouth-watering clash in the semifinals.

However in the men’s singles, H S Prannoy suffered a 13-21 5-21 loss to seventh seeded Chinese Tian Houwei in 33 minutes to crash out of the tournament. Sindhu, a silver medallist at the Rio Olympics, dished out a dominating game to trounce Indonesia’s Dinar Dyah Ayustine 21-12 21-4 in just 30 minutes.

The sixth seeded Indian will face the winner of the match between World No. 1 Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei and Japan’s Minatsu Mitani in the quarterfinals. Sindhu and Ayustine were tied at 4-4 initially but after that the Indian broke off and left her opponent far behind to go one game up. In the second game, Sindhu opened up a 9-0 lead early on and never looked back against her Indonesian opponent to easily clinched her second round match.