National Badminton C'ship: Prannoy stuns Srikanth to lift title

In what may come as a thrilling match for the Indian fans, World No. 11 HS Prannoy produced a spirited performance to sweep aside World No. 2 Kidambi Srikanth in men's singles final of the 2017 Senior National Badminton to lift the title on Wednesday.

After comfortably winning the first game, second-seed Prannoy went down in the second before he rebounded strongly to register a 21-15, 16-21, 21-7 win over top-seed and his countryman Srikanth in an exhilarating all-India summit showdown that lasted for 49 minutes.

Quite similar to their French Open Super Series semi-final contest, Prannoy was the one who made the breakthrough first by winning the first game, only to see Srikanth bouncing back and clinching the second game.

However, Prannoy did not repeat the same mistakes as he made in Paris and gave no chance to the in-form Srikanth in the tie-breaker game.

It should be noted that Srikanth recently became the first Indian and only the fourth male shuttler in the history to lift four Super Series titles in a calendar year by winning the French Open.

He has also clinched the Denmark Open Super Series Premier, the Indonesia Open Super Series Premier and Australian Open Super Series earlier in the year.

Meanwhile, Rio Olympic silver-medallist PV Sindhu and 11th-ranked Saina Nehwal will lock horns with each other in the finals of the women's singles event later today. It will be the first time when these two Indian aces take on each other in the national championship.