Sindhu succumbs to Saina’s master class

Jakarta: Former World No 1 Saina Nehwal asserted her supremacy over Olympic silver medallist P V Sindhu with a straight game victory to enter the semi-finals of the $350,000 Indonesia Masters World Tour Super 500 here on Friday.

London Olympics bronze medallist Saina, who is coming back from an ankle injury, gave ample display of her powerful game as she overcame Sindhu 21-13, 21-19 in an all-Indian women's singles quarter-final clash.

Saina, who has a silver and a bronze at World Championships, will next face Thailand's Ratchanok Intanon, seeded fourth. The Thai dumped reigning world champion and Japanese sixth seed Nozomi Okuhara 21-17, 21-10. Saina has an 8-5 head-to-head record against Ratchanok.

Playing Sindhu for the first time outside India, Saina produced her best and never let the advantage slip after leading 3-0 early on in the first game.Despite Sindhu fighting back and making it 4-4, Saina continued to dominate the proceedings and entered the break with 11-9 advantage. The 27-year-old continued her good run after the interval, increasing her lead to 18-10 at one stage. Sindhu manage to win three more points before the senior shuttler grabbed the opening game.

Saina and Sindhu have clashed twice in the international circuit so far with both winning once. At the 2014 Syed Modi Grand Prix Gold, Saina defeated Sindhu, who returned the favour at the India Open Super Series last year.

London Games bronze medallist, Saina had, however, upstaged Sindhu to clinch the women's singles title in the Senior National Badminton Championship last year."I m happy to be on the winning side against Sindhu today," Saina wrote on Twitter.

Meanwhile, India's young men doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty continued their impressive show and entered the semi-finals. Satwik-Chirag edged past Danish fourth seeds Mads Conrad-Petersen and Mads Pieler Kolding 23-21, 15-21, 21-19 in an hour and six minutes.