India’s badminton stars Saina Nehwal and PV Sindhu negotiated tough opening round fixtures in the Australia Open Superseries on Wednesday and expressed satisfaction that they could make a winning start to their respective campaigns.
Continuing the trend of facing a higher ranked opponent at the start of major events, Nehwal defeated fourth seed Sung Ji Hyun of Korea. The former world No.1 showed her class to beat her opponent in straight games 21-10 21-16 and will face Malaysia’s Soniia Cheah in her next match.
Good round one victory against the world number 5 ji Hyun sung from Korea 21-10 ..21-16 👊🏻 pic.twitter.com/3mwTgt7x5p
— Saina Nehwal (@NSaina) June 21, 2017
For Nehwal, the past few months have been tough, with her rankings falling out of the top 10. This means she ends up facing tougher opponents in early rounds. Nehwal spoke about the struggle she endured to defeat Sung.
“I have the game, I just need to get these matches. My condition is not at its best. In the second game my stamina was coming down, but I still managed to pull it out,” Nehwal was quoted as saying in the bwfworldsuperseries website. “I didn’t expect to cross the first round, now I’m looking forward to the next one.”
Nehwal said her feel for the game was good on the day and the smashes were sharp. “[Sung] was getting to the net quickly and keeping it tight at the net. I had to be alert for that. She’s also very smart rally player. I’m surprised to beat her with this score. I’m quite happy.”
Later in the day, Rio Olympic silver-medallist P V Sindhu saw off Indonesia Super Series Premier champion Sayaka Sato of Japan 21-17 14-21 21-18 in a match that lasted an hour and five minutes. She was outplayed in the second game by Sato but managed to gather herself and cross the line in the decider.
From 14-20, Sato saved 4 match points to make it 18-20, before @Pvsindhu1 finally closed it out 21-18. Sindhu thru to round 2 #AustraliaSS
— The Field (@thefield_in) June 21, 2017
“I didn’t know what to do [in the second game], nothing was going right. I was blank when she got the 17-13 lead. She was ahead early in the third game as well,” Sindhu was quoted as saying. “My coach asked me to forget about my mistakes and to focus on the third game. There were a lot of rallies in the third and I managed to catch up with her.”
The fifth seeded Indian will face China’s Chen Xiaoxin, who ended G Ruthvika Shivani’s gallant fight in another match. Shivani fought for an hour before losing 17-21 21-12 12-21 to Chen.