Indian badminton ace PV Sindhu reached the semifinal of the Canada Open with a dominant win over Chinese star shuttler Fang Jie, while young sensation Lakshya Sen was made to work hard by his German opponent Julien Carraggi before sealing progress into the last four of their respective singles events at the Canada Open Super 500 badminton tournament.
Commonwealth Games champion Sindhu, asserted her superiority over Fang Jie on the day to pick up her maiden victory over the Chinese shuttler in four encounters with a straight sets win 21-13 21-7 in the quarterfinals women’s singles event late Friday night.
Sindhu, a double Olympic medallist, is attempting to turn around a disappointing season given her lofty standards.
The 28-year-old has had to endure a horrid season since coming back from a stress fracture early in the year.
Sindhu is slated to face off against world number one Yamaguchi of Japan.
The shuttler from Hyderabad leads the head-to-head against her semifinal opponent 14-10 and will look to avenge her losses against the Japanese star at the Singapore Open earlier this year.
Sindhu took the initiative with an early lead as she lead by 4 points initially at 5-1 in the first game displaying her trademark smashes and drops to trouble her Chinese counterpart.
She was also helped by the fact that Fang Jie made multiple unforced errors to further push the Indians ahead at 11-6.
Sindhu finished things with two whipping smashes as Fang tried to reduce the arrears, only to come up short.
In the men’s singles quarterfinal matchup, Sen fought tooth and nail to keep Carraggi at bay, despite the German qualifier’s spirit fight.
The Indian registered a 21-8 17-21 21-10 win to secure his passage into the last four of the competition, where he is set to square up against fourth-seeded Kenta Nishimoto of Japan.
Sen and Nishimoto are tied at 1-1 in their head-to-head and it will be interesting to see who comes out on top in Calgary.
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