PV Sindhu turns Worlds upside down

Beats defending champ Wang Yihan in straight games; Nehwal and Kashyap also make quarterfinals.

Upcoming Indian player PV Sindhu on Thursday defeated the defending champion,second-seeded Wang Yihan of China,to enter the womens quarterfinals at the Badminton world championships. The 18-year-old,10th-seeded Sindhu won 21-18,23-21 in 54 minutes to set up a meeting with seventh-seeded Chinese player Wang Shixian.

In another upset,unseeded Carolina Marin of Spain defeated fifth seed Sung Ji Hyun of South Korea,13-21,21-13,22-20 in a tough 75-minute battle.

Saina stretched

Sindhus compatriot,third-seeded Saina Nehwal,also advanced with a 18-21,21-16,21-14 victory over Thai player Porntip Buranaprasertsuk. Saina kept her all-win record against Buranaprasertsuk intact,having beaten her in their five previous encounters before today. Sainas most recent win against Buranaprasertsuk came last year during the Thailand Open.

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Saina will next take on Koreas Yeon Ju Bae,who is seeded 13th in the event. Buranaprasertsuk started off strongly today and surprised the Indian with better command over smash winners,sending down 11 of them in the first game. But Saina regained her composure pretty quickly and roared back in the second game with nine of her trademark smash winners. She kept up the pressure in the deciding game as well to emerge triumphant after the initial scare.

Another upset

Indias Parupalli Kashyap,seeded 13th,defeated sixth-seeded Yun Hu of Hong Kong while ninth-seeded Jan O. Jorgensen of Denmark knocked out fourth-seeded Boonsak Ponsana of Thailand. Kashyap hit 16 clear winners as compared to just nine by his opponent from Hong Kong. Yun Hu completely failed to live up to the expectations and was far from his best today. Hu,looking totally off-colour,let the Indian dominate throughout the match.

Kashyap took an upper hand by opening up a 14-7 lead in the first game itself,before wrapping it up 21-13. The second game also saw Hu suffering a similar fate as Kashyap once again made it 14-7. But Hu pocketed four consecutive points to reduce the gap to 11-14 and then levelled 15-15 before running out steam to hand Kashyap a comfortable victory in the end. Kashyap will meet world number three Pengyu Du in the last eight stage.

Top-seeded Li Xuerui of China,second-seeded Chen Long of China and defending champion Lin Dan,also of China,won their third-round matches in straight games. In the womens section,fourth-seeded Thai player Ratchanok Intanon made the last eight.