World No 11 Saina Nehwal lost to the 2016 Rio Olympics gold medalist Carolina Marin 21-7, 21-7 to end Indian contingent’s any hope of a medal.
Indian badminton player Saina Nehwal. (File Photo: IANS)
Saina Nehwal became the latest Indian shuttler to crash out of the ongoing Malaysia Masters after losing to Carolina Marin in one of the quarterfinals on Friday.
The world number 11 lost to the 2016 Rio Olympics gold medalist in straight games 21-7, 21-7 to end Indian contingent’s any hope of a medal from the Super 500 tournament. Marin came on top of the former world number one singles player in just 30 minutes after dominating her throughout the match.
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Nehwal had reached the quarterfinals after defeating Lianne Tan 21-15, 21-17 in the first round and coming on top of AN Se Young 25-23, 21-12 in a nervy round of 16 clash.
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Earlier on the day, the reigning badminton World Champion PV Sindhu faced a straight games defeat to Tzu Ying and was consequently knocked out from the quarterfinals in Kuala Lumpur on Friday.
The Taiwanese, who is currently ranked world number two, defeated the Indian shuttler 21-16 21-16 in the quarterfinal. With the win, she even extended her head to head lead against Sindhu to 12 wins to 5.
Notably, this was PV Sindhu’s second back to back defeat to Tzu Ying. The last time the duo had met each other in the French Open quarterfinals and even then it was the Taiwanese who had ended up on the winning side.
In Men’s Singles, out of five contenders only two, HS Prannoy and Sameer Verma, had made it beyond the first round. However, both the male shuttlers were ousted from the second round as India did not have any representation in the quarterfinals. Star Indian doubles players Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty were also eliminated from the first round.
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