Press Trust of India
Mumbai, Jan 3: India’s highest ranked male shutter, Kidambi Srikanth, pulled off an upset victory over former World No. 1 Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia, but his team Bengaluru Hot Guns went down 2-3 to Hyderabad Hunters in the Premier Badminton League clash here Sunday.
The Hunters, in fact, rallied from an early loss to overcome the Hot Guns. Hyderabad started on the wrong foot by losing the first match, the women’s singles clash, when their Thai signing Supanida Katethong was beaten in straight games (15-8 15-11) to Bengaluru’s Suo Di.
However, the Hunters gamble of making the men’s doubles clash as their trump match paid rich dividends as the scratch combine of Carsten Mogensen of Denmark and Indonesian Markis Kido fought back from a game down to get the better of Bengaluru’s Malaysian pair of Hoon Thien How and Kim Wah Lim 13-15 15-9 15-14.
The 2-1 advantage that Hyderabad secured made it imperative that Bengaluru’s Sameer Verma clinch his men’s singles trump match against higher-ranked rival Parupalli Kashyap but it was not to be as the latter won 15-14 15-13 to provide Hunters with a winning 3-0 points lead.
This made the last two matches of no consequence for the second day running, including the prime slot fifth clash between Malaysian World No. 5 Lee representing Hyderabad and Srikanth of Bengaluru as well as the preceding mixed doubles match.
Bengaluru’s Ashwini Ponnappa and lanky Danish partner Joachim Fischer Nielsen defeated her regular women’s doubles partner Jwala Gutta and Markis Kidoin 15-13 15-13 to make the points score 3-1.
