Sindhu crashes out of French Open

Ace Indian shuttler P V Sindhu failed to stop her recent-run of early exits after the reigning world champion crashed out in the quarterfinals of the French Open after a three-game defeat to top seed Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei here.

The fifth seeded Indian went down 16-21 26-24 17-21 to the world number one shuttler in a hard-fought match that lasted one hour 15 minutes on Friday night.

This the 10th time Sindhu had lost to Tzu Ying, who now enjoys a dominant 10-5 record over the Indian.

Sindhu had last defeated the Asian Games gold medallist on the way to her maiden World Championship title in August. The 24-year-old Indian had also got the better of Tzu Ying during 2016 Olympics before knocking out the number one women's singles player in the World Tour Finals last year.

This was also world number six, Sindhu's fourth successive early exit from a tournament since claiming the World Championship at Basel, Switzerland in August. The Indian has struggled to find form since then.

The Olympic silver medallist made a first round exit in the Korea Open last month before crashing out in the second round of the Korea Open and Denmark Open in the last two events.

Earlier on Friday, a fighting Saina Nehwal was also knocked out after she went down in straight games to Korea's An Se Young in the women's singles quarterfinals.

The men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty kept alive the Indian challenge by progressing to the semifinals.

The world no. 11 pair from India will next face fifth seed Hiroyuki Endo and Yuta Watanbe of Japan.