Top seeds
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy
and
Chirag Shetty
cruised into the semifinals, but
PV Sindhu
lost 24-22, 17-21, 18-21 to
Chen Yu Fei
of China at the
French Open
BWF Super-750 tournament on Friday.
Satwik-Chirag defeated Supak Jomkoh and Kittinupong Kedren of Thailand 21-19, 21-13. The world No. 1 pair is yet to lose a game in this tournament. From 16-18 in the first game, they moved to game point with four successive points.
They dominated the second game too. In the semifinals on Saturday, they will face third seeds Kang Min Hyuk and Seo Seung Jae of South Korea.
Earlier,
Sindhu
put up a good fight against the reigning Olympic champion. The last time Sindhu defeated Yu Fei was when she won the World championship in 2019.
The one hour, 32 minute contest saw the best of Sindhu. Despite the result, Sindhu and her team will be satisfied with her game on Friday. In the three-game contest that had long rallies, deft drops and powerful smashes, Sindhu was her old self.
The first game saw Sindhu and Yu Fei in a close contest till 22-22 before Sindhu won two big points, the last one with a well-timed crosscourt drop.
In a change of plan, Yu Fei started playing long rallies in the second. Sindhu was up to the task and retrieved some very difficult drops. From 13-13, Yu Fei surged ahead as Sindhu committed a few unforced errors. The Chinese shuttler collected five straight points at this critical stage of the game. Sindhu's brief recovery was not enough and the match entered the decider.
Like in the second game, Sindhu conceded five consecutive points which allowed Yu Fei to move from 11-12 to 16-12. Though Sindhu managed to reduce the gap to 15-16, the latter upped the ante with a couple of smash winners. In the semifinals, Yu Fei will play Akane Yamaguchi of Japan. From the top-half of the draw, South Korea's An Se Young and Chinese Taipei's Tai Tzu Ying made it to the last four stage.
English (US) ·