But drops to 4th in world rankings following recent setbacks; Sai Praneeth falls.
On a day when Saina Nehwal advanced to the quarterfinals of the Singapore Open, the ace shuttler also suffered a setback. She dropped from second to fourth in the women’s singles ranking released by Badminton World Federation on Thursday.
The Olympic bronze medallist had held on to No. 2 rank for 15 weeks since March 14. The drop was only expected following her inability to retain the titles at Thailand Open two weeks ago (quarterfinalist) and the Indonesia Open (semifinalist) last week.
However, chief national coach Pullela Gopichand did not read too much into her drop in rankings as German Juliane Schenk took her place and Thai teenager Ratchanok Intanon moved to third while last week’s Indonesia Open champion Li Xuerui retained her No. 1 rank. “Saina dropping in rankings is not really a problem. Hopefully, she does well this week and gets back,” Gopichand told dna from Singapore.
Meanwhile on the court, Saina posted another hard-fought 16-21 21-16 21-9 victory over Japanese Eriko Hirose in the second round. On her victory that came in 61 minutes, Gopichand said: “Saina is playing alright. The first game was a close affair and Eriko played well. But Saina picked up in the second and was actually very good in the third.”
Saina is the lone Indian left in the fray as the other three matches on the day involving Indians, including Sai Praneeth, did not bring any good news.
Gopichand added that the conditions were not conducive for earning smash points. “It was on the slower side. Getting smash points were difficult,” he said.
There were only 15 smash winners for Saina as against Hirose’s seven in the entire match.
Saina will take on Indonesia’s Lindaweni Fanetri in Friday’s quarterfinals. The two met only last week in the first round in Jakarta with the Indian winning in three games.
In men’s second round, 20-year-old Sai Praneeth, the only Indian from among seven in men’s singles to enter the second round and who accounted for world No. 6 Hun Yu (the Hong Kong player went down two places to sixth rank on the day) on Wednesday, lost to Malaysia’s Wei Feng Chong 11-21
21-17 16-21 in 53 minutes.
Gopichand was concerned about the inconsistency of the young upcoming players. “Sai had his chances. In the third game, after drawing level at 11-all, he missed a couple of points and by the time he tried to catch up, it was too late.
Having said that, they are young and need to be consistent. In a year or so, they will get better. The good thing is theat they are showing promise. All of their matches are hard-fought games. Of course, experience will count.”
Sai moved up 16 places to be ranked 45th in men’s singles.
Gopichand said that India’s best male shuttler, Parupalli Kashyap has been suffering from poor form. Kashyap, seeded seventh, lost in the opening round late on Wednesday to Japan’s Takuma Ueda in three games.
“Kashyap has been going through a bad phase this year. But there is nothing to take away from Ueda, who played a fantastic game. More than Kashyap playing badly, Ueda played very well. We have got a month for World Championships and we will sort out his problems,” Gopichand said.
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