Saina, Sindhu, Satwik-Chirag advance at Indonesia Masters

Saina Nehwal, P.V. Sindhu and the men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty advanced to the second round, while Parupalli Kashyap exited in the first round of the $350,000 Indonesia Masters World Tour Super 500 here on Wednesday.

Saina, the 2012 Olympic bronze medallist, moved past Chinese seventh seed Chen Yufei 22-24, 21-15, 21-14 in an hour and nine minutes. The veteran will take on Chinese Chen Xiaoxin in the next round.

Second seeded Sindhu eased past Indonesian Hanna Ramadini 21-13, 21-10 in 34 minutes to enter the pre-quarterfinals. The 2016 Olympic silver medallist will meet Malaysian qualifier Masgoh Jin Wei on Thursday.

If both Saina and Sindhu manage to win their respective second-round matches, they will face each other in the quarter-finals.

In the men's singles, Kashyap went down 18-21, 18-21 in 41 minutes to Malaysian Wei Feng Chong. Sameer Verma also was knocked out of the competition, losing to Japanese Kazumasa Sakai 16-21, 21-12, 10-21 in 53 minutes.

Satwik-Chirag stunned Japanese eighth seeds Takuto Inoue and Yuki Kaneko 21-15, 21-17 in 35 minutes. The Indian pair will face Chinese Taipei's Lio Min Chun and Esu Ching Heng for a place in the quarter-finals.

But the experienced pair of Manu Attri and B. Sumeeth Reddy went out of the competition. They lost 18-21, 21-16, 16-21 to Chinese Taipei's Lu Ching Yao and Yang Po Han in 58 minutes.

--IANS

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