London: Saina Nehwal stormed into the quarter finals of the World Badminton Championship after zooming past Pui Yin Yip of Hong Kong in the third round of the women’s singles event here on Thursday.

The world No. 6 didn’t waste any time in getting into the rhythm and was leading 13-5 in the second game when 14th seed Pui Yin retired to bring a premature end to the match. However, Ajay Jayaram couldn’t cross the pre-quarters hurdle, losing a gruelling three-game match against sixth seed Jin Chen in the men’s singles competition.

The Indian lost 21-18, 12-21, 11-21 to the world No. 6 in a match that lasted more than an hour at the Wembley arena here, which will also host the London Olympics next year.

Jwala Gutta and V Diju also couldn’t get past the fifth seeded English pair of Joachim Fischer Nielsen and Christinna Pedersen and lost 9-21, 15-21 in a 34-minute match.

Saina, who reached the quarter finals in the 2009 and 2010 edition too, opened up a 2-0 lead and then moved with giant strides of three, seven and nine points to leave Pui Yin helpless.

The second game was no different as Saina moved from 5-1 to 9-3 before the Hong Kong girl could manage just two more points before conceding the match.

“I am happy to make it to the quarters. I am in the best shape and hopefully I will play well. In 2009 I was suffering from chicken pox and didn’t get much time to train but this time, I have trained for more than a month,” said Saina, who will take on the winner of the third round match between 12th seed Petya Nedelcheva and third seed Xin Wang of China.