PV Sindhu failed to defend her Swiss Open Super 300 badminton championship after being stunned by unseeded Putri Kusuma Wardani of Indonesia in a thrilling three-game women’s singles second round match here.
World No.9 Sindhu, placed fourth here, was defeated 15-21 21-12 18-21 by the 38th ranked Wardani in their first-ever international match on Thursday night.
However, the second-seeded men’s pairing of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty kept India’s flag flying by reaching the quarterfinals with a hard-fought 12-21 21-17 28-26 victory over Taiwanese pair Fang-Chih Lee and Fang-Jen Lee.
Later on Friday, the world No. 6 Indian duo will meet the Danish duo of Jeppe Bay and Lasse Molhede. Earlier on Thursday, world No. 9 and fifth seed H S Prannoy was knocked out in the second round by unseeded Christo Popov of France. Prannoy, the pre-match favorite, looked like a pale shadow of himself in front of world No. 40 Popov, losing 8-21 8-21 to bow out of the men’s singles tournament.
Kidambi Srikanth, however, was the first to exit on Thursday, falling to Hong Kong’s Cheuk Yiu Lee.
According to rankings, there isn’t much separating the two, as Srikanth is ranked 20th in the globe, while his opponent is ranked 19th.
It was a hard-fought match, but Lee kept his cool to take the singles pre-quarterfinal match 22-20 21-17.
Mithun Manjunath, the national winner, also lost in the second round, falling 19-21 10-21 to Chia Hao Lee of Chinese Taipei.
