Nagpur: Olympic medallists P V Sindhu and Saina Nehwal sailed into the women's singles semi-finals while men's world No. 2 Kidambi Srikanth also notched up a comfortable win in the 82nd Senior National Badminton Championship here on Monday.
In the women's quarter finals, London Games bronze medallist Saina thrashed Aakarshi Kashyap 21-17 21-10. In another last-eight match, Rio Olympics silver medallist Sindhu proved too good for Shriyanshi Pardeshi, winning her match 21-11 21-17.
The big-ticket semi-final on Tuesday will be the men's singles match between world No.2 Srikanth and former Junior world No.1 Lakshya Sen
The in-form Srikanth earned a hard-fought 21-17, 23-21 victory over eighth seed Shubham Prajapati.
While Srikanth began the match slowly, he picked up pace quickly in the first game to eke out an easy first game win. In the second game, Prajapati opened up an early 5-1 lead and despite some fightback from Srikanth, the eighth seed went into the break with an 11-9 advantage.
Prajapati proved a tough nut to crack for Srikanth as the French Open winner struggled to level 18-18. From there Srikanth saved two game points and showed why he is the top seed to pick up two quick points to win 23-21.
Lakshya Sen, on the other hand, was on his way to beat Jayaram in the first game before a heel injury forced the world No.22 to retire and Sen set up a mouth-watering match against Srikanth.
The other semi-final will be between Prannoy and Subhankar Dey. While Prannoy edged past Parupalli Kashyap 22-20, 21-19 in 39 minutes, Subhankar stunned B Sai Praneeth coming from a game down to win the match 13-21, 21-18, 22-20.
In the doubles category, all the top seeds made it to the quarter finals. Both Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponappa and Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N Sikki Reddy will play on Tuesday in the mixed doubles semi-finals and if they win, they will face each other in the final. On the other hand, Ponappa and Sikki will play in the semi-finals of the women's doubles against Aparna Balan and Sruthi KP. In the men's doubles, both the top seed Satwik and Chirag Shetty and No. 2 seed Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy made it to the semis.
