Badminton World C'ship: Sindhu breezes into third round

Rio Olympics silver-medalist PV Sindhu got past her Indonesian opponent Fitriani Fitriani to book her place in the third round of the ongoing Badminton World Championship here at Nanjing Olympic Sports Centre on Wednesday.

The 23-year-old thrashed Fitriani 21-14, 21-9 in a one-sided clash that lasted 35 minutes.

Starting the first game on a steady note, both Sindhu and Fitriani were evenly poised with 1-1 points each.

After moving neck-to-neck in the initial stage, the Indian shuttler started to accelerate and collected two consecutive points to make the scorecard read 6-4 in her favour.

Sindhu collected some quick points owing to a few unforced errors from the Indonesian player and by the mid-interval Indian shuttler was leading the game 11-6.

Amid long rallies and angular drop shots, Sindhu won the first game 21-14 without breaking much sweat on the court.

The second game started on a thrilling note with a long rally which was eventually won by the Indian shuttler.

Coming back strongly, the unseeded Indonesian player took the lead for the first time in the game.

Targeting the corners of the court, Sindhu raced ahead with a lead of three points. By the mid-game interval, the score was 11-5 in the favour of Sindhu.

Displaying complete dominance over her Indonesian opponent in last few minutes, Sindhu registered a convincing 21-9 second game victory to move ahead in the tournament.

Sindhu is most likely to face ninth seed Sung Ji Hyun of South Korea for a place in the quarter-finals.

In other matches of the day, ace Indian shuttler Kidambi Srikanth overcame unseeded Pablo Abian of Spain 21-15, 12-21, 21-14 to move into the third round of the tournament.

While Indian shuttler HS Prannoy crashed out of the tournament following a 21-8, 16-21, 15-21 loss to unseeded Brazilian Ygor Coelho in the second round, Sameer Verma defeated Lucas Corvee of France 21-13, 21-10 in just 38 minutes to enter the second round.

In women's doubles event, Indian challenge came to an end after Ashwini Ponappa and N Sikki Reddy lost to the second-seeded pair of Yuki Fukushima and Sayaka Hirota from Japan 14-21, 15-21.