JOIN USTop shuttlers Saina Nehwal and PV Sindhu and national champion K Srikanth continued their rampaging run with contrasting victories to reach the semifinals of the $120,000 Syed Modi International India Grand Prix Gold tournament here on Friday.
Saina remained on course for her first title of the season when she registered a 21-15, 21-15 victory over fifth seed Bellaetrix Manuputty of Indonesia in the women’s singles quarterfinals while World championship bronze medallist Sindhu took just 34 minutes to pack off Indonesia’s seventh seed Hera Desi 21-11, 21-13.
With all the top four seeds knocked out of the men’s draw, Srikanth was the highest seed in action and the rising shuttler survived a scare from 11th seed B Sai Praneeth before prevailing 21-18, 20-22, 21-12.
The Thailand Grand Prix champion will now take on seventh seed H S Prannoy for a place in the final. Prannoy, the 2010 Youth Olympics silver medallist, packed off giant-killer Zulfadli Zulkiffli of Malaysia 21-19, 21-14.
The other semifinal will see Aditya Prakash take on ninth seed Xeu Song of China. Aditya got the better of Iskandar Zulkarnain Zainuddin 21-19, 18-21, 21-16, while Song needed 50 minutes to end the run of Shubhankar Dey 21-18, 21-15.
Among other Indians in fray in the doubles competition, only men’s pair of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and Akshay Dewalkar reached the semifinals after the second-seeded combination defeated sixth seeds Andrei Adistia and Hendra Aprida Gunawan 21-16, 21-12.
However, third-seeded pair of Manu Attri and Sumeeth Reddy B could not go any further and lost to eighth seeds Kaixiang Huang and Si Wei Zheng of China 17-21, 13-21 in another men’s doubles match.
Tarun Kona and Jishnu Sanyal also crashed out after losing 14-21, 14-21 to Thailand’s Songphon Anugritayawon and Pakkawat Vilailak in another quarterfinal match. In women’s doubles, Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa lost 14-21, 11-21 to Phataimas Muenwong and Kilasu Ostermeyer.