Badminton
Badminton Asia Championships: PV Sindhu wins dramatic quarterfinal, Satwik-Chirag lose
PV Sindhu saw off her Tokyo bronze match opponent He Bingjiao in a thriller at the Badminton Asia Championships quarters and has secured a bronze, at least.
PV Sindhu (Source: BAC 2022)
In a match, that saw a dramatic turn of events relating to confusion over scoring in the final game, India's ace shuttler PV Sindhu defeated China's He Bing Jiao in the quarterfinals of the Badminton Asia Championships on Friday in Manila.
A nail-biting contest was on display where the two rivals took the tie to a decider with Sindhu emerging as the winner by 21-9, 13-21, 21-19 in 1 hour 16 minutes.
In their previous counter, Sindhu had the better of her Chinese rival in the Tokyo Olympics where she won the bronze medal with a score of 21-13, 21-15.
Friday's victory leads Sindhu to the semi-final of the Badminton Asia Championships for the first time since 2014 and now she is assured of at least a bronze medal.
Sindhu started the first game in a dominating way where she took a huge lead of 11-2. It eventually took her just 13 minutes to pocket the opening game with splendid usage of cross-court angles and mighty smashes.
The second set saw Bingjiao picking up her usual momentum to register a brilliant comeback. At the interval, the two contenders were closed in at 11-10. A few unforced errors cost Sindhu the game and it was headed for the decider.
Point confusion in the decider
Sindhu's A-game came out in the decider where she displayed immense resilience and went on building points by playing at good angles. Bingjiao, who was trailing at one point, came to all guns blazing making it difficult for Sindhu at one point in time.
The game came to a halt suddenly with the confusion over scoring, where the chair umpire had to intervene and match officials also flocked to see what the fuss was about. The chair umpire was perfectly confused after a challenge and didn't know if the score should be rightfully, 14-17 with Sindhu in lead or 15-16 as He Bingjiao came to suggest. The play was stopped for a good couple of minutes with a lot of confusion and commotion doing the rounds at such a crucial point in the match.
However, Sindhu kept her nerves and kept hitting body smashes and did some delicate net play which ultimately won her match even after He Bingjiao saved three match points.
With this victory, Sindhu secured her eighth win against Bingjiao, the World No. 9 from China and has now secured a bronze medal.
Sindhu will be taking on Akane Yamaguchi in the semi-finals, next.
Satwik-Chirag lose thriller
In the other match of the day, the dynamic doubles duo of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty took on the Malaysian pair of Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik in the quarterfinals.
Although Satwik-Chirag was incredibly impressive in the first game and dominated for the better part, they lost steam in the second and the Malaysians took advantage of it to drag the match into a decider.
Extending their head to head record to 4-0 over the Indian pair, the Tokyo bronze medallist pair of Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik had the last word, winning 12-21, 21-14, 21-16 in a tight battle of 53 minutes to crush the campaign of the third-seeded Indian pair at the Manila event.
