Indonesia Open 2022: Prannoy beats Gemke, storms into semis

The Indian shuttler is two steps away from an iconic win at the prestigious tournament.

The Indonesia Open 2022 is heading into its business end. On the fourth day of the prestigious Super 1000 series tournament on the BWF calendar, H.S. Prannoy of India made the headlines. The shuttler has made it to the semi-final stage of the tournament by beating Rasmus Gemke in the quarter-final. He is now two steps away from winning this prestigious tournament and following in the footsteps of Kidambi Srikanth.

Only once has there been an Indian winner at the tournament in Men’s Singles category. Kidambi Srikanth won the Indonesia Open 2017, five years ago. Since then, Indian shuttlers in this category have not managed to win the championship. This year in the city of Jakarta, Indonesia, players like Lakshya Sen and Srikanth himself crashed out in the first round itself. However, Prannoy has emerged as a surprise performer and deserves his place in the penultimate tie.

The World No.23 ranked Indian came up against a higher-ranked opponent in the quarter-final. Rasmus Gemke of Denmark is World No.13 at the moment and was in a good form at the tournament. Specifically, the Danish shuttler got the better of Kento Momota, the second seed from Japan in the first round. However, Prannoy was in a different mood altogether when these two met.

Unstoppable Prannoy cruises into the next round

H.S. Prannoy beat Rasmus Gemke in straight games, thanks to a 21-14, 21-12 score. The tie went on for merely 40 minutes, which goes to show the domination by the Indian shuttler. While the first game was fully one-sided, the second was more even but saw sensational overall gameplay by Prannoy. Interestingly, there was no point in the match where Prannoy was trailing Gemke. Furthermore, this win comes shortly after the decisive clash in the Thomas Cup 2022 between these two players where Prannoy got the better of Gemke in the fifth rubber to help India reach the final and eventually win the tournament.

The next round is the semi-final of the Indonesia Open 2022. H.S. Prannoy will play against Jun Peng Zhao. The Chinese shuttler beat Cheuk Yiu Lee of Hong Kong in three games. The final score read 21-14, 17-21, 21-11 and the match took 59 minutes to finish. With Zhao coming from a physically demanding clash, Prannoy will have the advantage of being fresher in the next round.

In the second semi-final of the Indonesia Open 2022, top seed Viktor Axelsen will face sixth seed Lee Zii Jia of Malaysia. If H.S. Prannoy wins the semi-final, he will face one of the two aforementioned players for the ultimate glory. 

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