Shuttler Srikanth enters final, Sindhu bows out of French Open

Indian shuttler Kidambi Srikanth bounced back to win 14-21, 21-19, 21-18 in a three-setter against H.S Prannoy and enter the men's singles final but P.V. Sindhu crashed out of the women's singles at the $325,000 French Open Superseries here on Saturday.

Srikanth now has taken a 3-1 lead in the head-to-head statistics against Prannoy.

In the first game, after Srikanth took the first point of the match, Prannoy bounced back to take a 9-7 lead in the first game.

However, the Guntur man quickly brought things level 10-10. Later, Prannoy took charge of the things to take a 17-13 lead and convert it into his first game victory.

The second game started with Prannoy taking a slender 11-10 lead at the breather. Later Srikanth managed to come back and dominate things to clinch the second game and push the match to the third and decisive game.

In the third game, Prannoy had an early 11-10 advantage but failed to maintain it giving away easy points to Srikanth who capitalised on the situation and clinched the match.

Srikanth will take on the winner of match between Anders Antonsen and Kenta Nishimoto in the finals.

Earlier, Sindhu failed to find any momentum in a women's singles semi-final against Japan's Akane Yamaguchi that lasted 37 minutes, going down 14-21, 9-21.

The first game saw a close contest between both shuttlers with the Japanese taking a slender 11-10 lead at the breather.

The World No.5 gave little away to the Rio Olympics silver medallist from India, as she gathered seven straight points to take the opening game with ease.

The second game witnessed complete domination from the Japanese shuttler, who opened up a 6-0 lead before heading to the break at 11-2.

After the break, Akane continued to hold the upper hand and took full advantage of Sindhu's numerous unforced errors to easily pocket the game and the match.

--IANS

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