Srikanth, Sen ensure World Championships medal, Sindhu crashes out

Both the Indian players registered big wins in the tournamnet.

Star shuttlers Kidambi Srikanth and Lakshya Sen ensured at least one silver medal for India at the ongoing BWF World Championships 2021. Both the Indian players won their respective quarter-final matches on Friday. Kidambi was the first Indian shuttler to secure a place in the semi-finals, after an extremely dominant display against Dutch badminton player Mark Caljouw.

The No. 12 seed came into the match after a dominant display in the third round and continued his strong form in the World Championships. He did not allow Caljouw any room to manoeuvre or give the Dutchman any chances to get into the match. Srikanth won the match in straight games, picking up a huge 21-8, 21-7 win to book a place in the semi-finals. Lakshya Sen, however, took a much harder route to the semi-finals with a gritty win over Chinese shuttler Zhao Junpeng.

Lakshya Sen shows great resilience

Sen started the match rather strongly and looked very confident from the get-go. He rallied back hard to put the Chinese shuttler on the back foot in the first game and force errors. The Indian player won the first game 21-15, taking a key advantage in the quarter-finals match. However, Junpeng was not going down without a fight. He bounced back strongly in the second game, ousting Sen to win key points and pick up the game 21-15 himself. It all went down to the wire in the decisive final game, in which neither shuttler was willing to back down.

Neither was able to break each other and kept winning their points, forcing it to go right down to the wire. In the end, Sen showed a stronger resolve to barely snatch the game towards the end – picking up a 21-15, 15-21, 22-20 win after a valiant effort.

Srikanth and Sen will now face each other in an all-Indian men’s semi-final at the World Championships– with the winner heading onto the final and the loser being able to fight for at least the bronze medal.

Sindhu & Prannoy crash out

PV Sindhu faced extreme difficulty in her women’s singles quarter-final match against the World No. 1, Tai Tzu-ying. The Chinese Taipei shuttler is regarded as the best women’s shuttler in the world for a reason and proved why with a dominant win on Friday.

To her credit, Sindhu fought extremely hard to outwit her opponent in a match where she was definitely the underdog. The Indian shuttler showcased some impressive skills in the first game, but Tzu-ying was just too good and took the game 21-17.

That seemed to have an impact on Sindhu’s confidence. The Indian shuttler couldn’t get back into the match after that and failed to force a third game. Tzu-ying picked up a relatively comfortable 21-17, 21-13 win to move onto the semi-finals – while Sindhu’s medal-winning hopes were crushed.

On the other hand, HS Prannoy's dream run at the World Championships also came to an end. He faced defeat in straight games 14-21, 12-21 against Loh Kean Yew in a one-sided match. Prannoy had upset many top players in the ongoing tournament, but failed to produce any good passage of play in the quarter-final match.

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