Bangkok: Indian shuttlers PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth were virtually out of contention for the knockout stage in the BWF World Tour Finals being played. Both the Indian shuttlers lost their second successive matches played Thursday.
A week ago Sindhu had suffered a demoralising defeat to Ratchanok Intanon of Thailand. There was no change of script as the World Champion went down 18-21, 13-21 to the third seeded Thai.
Srikanth enjoyed a 3-0 head-to-head count against Wang Tzu Wei ahead of the match. However, it mattered little as the Taiwanese World No 12 claimed a come-from-behind 19-21, 21-9. 21-19 win over the Indian.
Only the top two players from each group will make it to the semifinals. So the losses for Thursday more or less knocked out the Indians from making it to the semifinals.
The Srikanth-Wang match was tight affair with both players fighting for every point. In the first game both players managed to achieve slender leads before Srikanth went into the break at 11-10. He played well to increase the lead to 15-11 and 17-12.
Wang, however, narrowed it down to 18-19 with Srikanth committing few errors but the Indian managed to grab two game points with a smash. He lost one before converting the next with Wang making a poor judgement at the backline.
In the second game Wang dominated the show. He built up a 9-5 lead and never looked back closing the game out comfortably.
In the decider Srikanth opened up a 4-1 lead. However, Wang grabbed seven straight points to lead 8-4. Srikanth bounced back to make it 10-10 but Wang again grabbed a lead at 17-13.
Srikanth made it 16-17, but three errors found Wang with four match points. Srikanth saved three but missed the line on the fourth to concede the game and match to Wang.
Sindhu fought hard against Ratchanok in the first game. She led 11-6 at the break, but once Ratchanok caught up at 14-all, Sindhu looked done. After winning the first game, Ratchanok simply ran way with the second. It was indeed a bad day for Indian shuttlers.