Kuala Lumpur: India’s Kidambi Srikanth made it to the men’s singles quarterfinal but an erratic P.V. Sindhu went down in straight games in the women’s singles competition at the $750,000 Malaysia Open here on Thursday.
Eighth seeded Srikanth, who had reached the finals of a BWF World Tour event after 17 months at the India Open last week, defeated Thailand’s Khosit Phetpradab 21-11, 21-15 in little over half an hour to set up a meeting with Olympic champion and fourth seed Chen Long of China.
The 26-year-old is now the lone Indian survivor in the tournament.
Fifth seed Sindhu blew a 13-10 advantage in the opening game to go down rather meekly 18-21, 7-21 to world No. 10 Sung Ji Hyun for her third straight defeat to the Korean.
Mixed doubles pair of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N Sikki Reddy lost 21-15, 17-21, 13-21 to local combination of Tan Kian Meng and Lai Pei Jing of Malaysia.
Srikanth opened up a 6-2 lead early on and then jumped to a 14-6 advantage. The Indian continued to dominate the proceedings to pocket the opening game. Nothing changed in the second with Srikanth again marching ahead early and holding his fort to comfortably shut out the match.
In the women’s singles match, after some good rallies, Sindhu enjoyed a three-point lead at 8-5 but Sung Ji Hyun drew level with a cross court smash. After the interval, Sung Ji erased the deficit and grabbed a 16-14 lead after Sindhu miscued two shots.
Sindhu then misjudged the shuttle twice at the backline to hand over the opening game to her rival.
Sung Ji raced to a 5-0 lead early on before moving to 10-5. A precise down-the-line return helped her to grab a 11-6 advantage at the break. Eventually two unforced errors from the Indian helped Sung Ji seal the quarterfinals spot.
