Jakarta: Shuttler Saina Nehwal made a positive start to the new season, edging past China’s Chen Yufei in a thrilling opening round match at the USD 3,50,000 Indonesia Masters World Tour Super 500 badminton tournament, here Wednesday.
London Olympics bronze medallist Saina, who is coming back from an ankle injury, dug deep into her reservoir to eke out a 22-24, 21-15, 21-14 win over World No.7 Chen in a women singles match that lasted 69 minutes here. She will next face China’s Chen Xiaoxin in the next round Thursday.
The young men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty also crossed the opening hurdle after beating the eighth-seeded Japanese pair of Takuto Inque and Yuki Kaneko 21-15, 21-17 to set up a clash with Chinese Taipei’s Liao Min Chun and Su Ching Heng in the second round.
Earlier, Sameer Verma, who recently recovered from a shoulder injury, suffered a 16-21, 21-12, 10-21 loss to Japan’s Kazumasa Sakai in a men’s singles match. The men’s doubles pair of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy also lost 18-21, 21-16, 16-21 to Lu Ching Yao and Yang Po Han to bow out of the tournament.
World No. 10 Saina was slow off the blocks in her match against Chen. She made uncharacteristic unforced errors and found herself 6-11 down at the break. However, as the game progressed one could see that the Indian was regaining her rhythm. Even though she lost the first game after deuce, the next two saw the Saina of old.
Controlling the pace of virtually each and every rally, Saina established good leads in both the second and third games and ran away with the match comfortably.
