Guwahati: PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal won their respective semifinals in contrasting fashion to set up a mouth-watering women’s singles summit showdown at the 83rd Senior National Championship here Saturday.
While Sindhu overcame a challenge from Assam’s promising 19-year-old Ashmita Chaliha 21-10, 22-20 in the first semifinal, Saina got the better of Nagpur qualifier Vaishnavi Bhale, who was part of India’s Uber Cup squad last year, 21-15, 21-14 to storm into the finals.
Two-time former champion Sourabh Varma too sealed his spot in the men’s singles final after beating Mumbai’s Kaushal Dharmamer 21-14, 21-17.
Earlier in the day, former champions Saina, Kashyap and Sourabh advanced to the semifinals with contrasting wins. The three-time former champion Saina hardly broke a sweat to get the better of former India No.1 Neha Pandit of Mumbai 21-10, 21-10 in a lop-sided quarter-final contest.
Kashyap, a 2012 winner, prevailed 21-18, 21-16 over Bodhit Joshi, who had reached the finals of Iceland International last year. Former World No.30 Verma, who had clinched Super 100 titles at Russia Open and Dutch Open last year, eked out a hard-fought 21-11, 21-23, 21-18 win over B Sai Praneeth.
In the other semifinal matches of the day, Rohan Kapoor and Kuhoo Garg lived up to their reputation as the top seeds in mixed doubles. The World No. 46 pair needed only 32 minutes to dispatch Vighnesh Devlekar and Harika V 21-15, 21-16 to enter the final. They will take on the unseeded combine of Manu Attri and Maneesha K, who continued their rampage with a fine 21-18, 21-17 victory over Shlok Ramchandran and Mithula UK.