PV Sindhu, Saina Nehwal crash out of Australian Open, Kidambi Srikanth in semis

China’s Tai Tzu Ying beat PV Sindhu 10-21, 22-20, 21-16 -21 in the quarter-final of $75,000 Australian Open on Friday.

This is world No.1 Ying’s seventh win in 10 meetings with Sindhu and the third on the trot.

Saina Nehwal lost to sixth seeded Chinese shuttler Sun Yu, 17-21, 21-10, 17-21, to bow out of the tournament as well.

Recently-crowned Indonesia Open champion Kidambi Srikanth defeated fellow Indian shuttler B.Sai Praneeth in a men’s singles quarter-final.

Srikanth, who was in his third quarter-final in the last five tournaments that he has participated in, made it to the semi-finals with a 25-23, 21-17 win in a match that lasted for 43 minutes.

Praneeth, who defeated Srikanth in the Singapore Open final in April, on Friday started the first game on a strong note, opening a healthy lead of 9-6 but Srikanth fought back to make it 10-10 and went into the break with a slight advantage of 11-10.

The two were neck-and-neck from there but at 13-13, before Praneeth took three straight points to make it 16-13 but Srikanth turned his A game right then to win five straight points to make it 18-16.

Srikanth then raced to 20-17 but Praneeth clawed back to win four points on the trot to make it 21-20. From there, an intense battle started as both the Indians saved two game points each, which saw Srikanth pocketing the game 25-23.

In the second game, Srikanth maintained a strong lead making it 9-6 before Praneeth managed three points in a row to equalise at 9-9. However, he could not hold the higher-ranked player as Srikanth extended his lead to 11-9 at the break.

Srikanth then went on to extend his lead to 16-12 before Praneeth came from behind and made it 16-16. Towards the end, Srikanth used all his experience to comfortably win the tie 21-17.

Srikanth will play the winner of the second quarter-final match between Shi Yuqi of China and Denmark’s Hans-Kristian Vittinghus.