Jakarta: Double Olympic medallist PV Sindhu and rising star Lakshya Sen made quarterfinal exits Friday in their respective singles events at the Indonesia Open Super Series 500 badminton tournament here. With the exit of PV Sindhu and Sen, India’s challenge at the tournament ended.
Sen was first to be eliminated as the 20-year-old went down fighting and forced a decider against his higher-seeded Chinese Taipei rival Chou Tien Chen 21-16, 12-21, 21-14.
India’s last hope then rested on Sindhu. However, the former World Champion went down without a fight to her old foe Ratchanok Intanon 12-21, 10-21 in a match lasting a little over half-an-hour.
The 27-year-old Intanon was at her dominating best against Sindhu. She looked at ease both in attack and defence. Sindhu was never able to fight back and suffered her fifth straight loss against her Thai rival.
After pocketing the first game easily, Intanon looked even more dominating in the second. She raced to a 10-point lead before sealing the issue in 33 minutes to improve her head-to-head against Sindhu to 9-4.
Sindhu, who made a semifinal exit in the Thailand Open last month, had earned a hard-fought victory over Gregoria Mariska Tunjung to enter the quarterfinals.
Earlier, World Championships bronze medallist Sen bounced back from behind to level the second game but the third-seed from Chinese Taipei was superior in the decider. He easily won the third game to seal victory in his favour.
This was Sen’s second straight defeat against Chou in less than a month. Sen lost to his Chinese Taipei rival 19-21, 21-13, 17-21 during the group stage of the Thomas Cup, before turning it around to script a historic triumph.
The 2018 Asian Games silver medallist, who had defeated the Indian in the group stage of the Thomas Cup in their only previous meeting, put up a power-packed show in the decider and mounted early pressure on the 20-year-old.
The World No. 4 from Chinese Taipei annexed three points in a row to build a six-point lead midway into the decider.
Sen was engaged in some superb rallies towards the end and even saved two match points but his valiant effort was not good enough as the experienced 32-year-old maintained his lead to make it a 2-0 in head-to-head against the Indian.
