Hyderabadi girl wins in straight games to progress into final; Keralite goes down fighting

Defending champion P V Sindhu notched up a comfortable straight-game win in women’s singles to enter the final but young shuttler H S Prannoy lost despite a valiant fight in the men’s singles semifinal of the Macau Grand Prix Gold here on Saturday.

The two-time World Championship bronze-medallist, Sindhu, held an all-win 4-0 record against Busanan Ongbumrungpan of Thailand before coming into the match and the Indian kept her record intact by registering her fifth win.

The second-seeded Indian prevailed over Busanan, seeded eighth, 21-14, 21-15 in a 42-minute match at the Tap Seac Multisport Pavilion. Prannoy, on the other hand, waged a fierce battle but still failed to breach the defence of Wing Ki Wong of Hong Kong, who prevailed 21-16, 16-21, 21-12 in the match that lasted an hour.

In the women’s singles match, Busanan moved into an early 5-2 lead but she couldn’t keep the pressure on Sindhu and the Indian turned the tables, reaching 13-9 and didn’t allow the Thai girl to claw back to pocket the first game. In the second game, Sindhu zoomed to 5-1 initially. Busanan drew parity at 8-8 and 12-12 but once again she was not consistent enough to bother Sindhu.

The duo played aggressive rallies and Busan played some extraordinary shots but it was mostly followed by miscued hits which allowed Sindhu to keep her lead.  leading 19-15, Sindhu changed the pace of the rallies as Busanan hit the shuttle out and then found the net to hand over the match and the final place to the Indian. She will face Kim Hyo Min of South Korea in the final.

In the men’s singles semifinals, Wong, who had beaten world champion Chen long at China Open early this month, rode on his better court coverage and strong defence to tame the Indian, not to mention the poor line calls. In the first game, Prannoy showed agility to lead early on but Wong came back to draw parity at 5-5. The Indian then made some errors errors allowing Wong to go into the breather 11-7 ahead.

Prannoy tried to return everything that was thrown at him and his follow-ups earned him points and he led 13-11 at one point. But the Indian once again struggled with his judgement of shuttle’s length as Wong led 17-14.

Two successive shots at the net by Prannoy and the score read 19-14 in Wong’s favour. Wong played patiently, forcing the Indian to commit errors and the ploy worked as Prannoy hit wide twice to hand over the first game to Wong. In the second game, Prannoy brought out his accurate down the line smashes and angled strokes to lead 11-7 at the interval.

After the break, the Indian continued playing his game to lead 18-10. Struggling to gauge Prannoy’s strokes, Wong managed to secure four more points. A bodyline smash helped Prannoy move to 19-14, before Wong roared back into contest with brilliant net-play.

In the decider, Prannoy struggled with his strokes which got buried in the nets a lot of times. His returns also went long and wide which allowed Wong to grab a massive 11-4 lead at the breather. However, back on his winning side of the court, Prannoy produced two powerful smashes to reduce the gap. At 7-11, Prannoy lost a point due to a wrong line call. But to the Indian’s credit, he kept his cool and counter-attacked to make it 13-12. Wong soon came back on his own and rode on a strong defence and some luck to shut the door on the Indian.