Newly-crowned World No 1 Saina Nehwal edged out China’s Sun Yu to reach the women’s singles semifinals of the USD 500,000 Malaysia Open Super Series Premier badminton tournament here on Friday.
The third seeded Indian eked out a 21-11, 18-21, 21-17 win over Sun in a quarterfinal battle that lasted an hour and 11 minutes at the Putra Stadium.
Saina will next take on Olympic champion Li Xuerui, who had withdrawn from the BWF World Super Series last year due to an injury and also skipped India Super Series last week.
The two-time World Championship silver medallist has defeated Saina eight times, while the Indian beat her twice — once during the 2010 Singapore Open and then at the 2012 Indonesia Open.
Saina, the Olympic bronze medallist, who had a 2-1 record going into the quarterfinal match against Sun, stamped her authority right from the start as she didn’t give the Chinese any easy points.
Brimming with confidence after her India Open triumph and ascent to World No 1, Saina zoomed ahead to 12-4 with a eight-point burst and never looked back. She grabbed the first game rather comfortably.
The World No 15 Sun, however, made a flying start in the second game, opening up a 7-1 lead early on but Saina soon caught up with the Chinese at 14-14. Sun then slowly started to distance herself from the Indian and made a successful return to the match.
A jolted Saina recovered in no time and surged to a 11-4 lead at the break in the decider. After the interval, Sun reeled off seven straight points from 8-14 to wrest a slender lead. The duo battled till 17-17 before the Indian slammed the door on the Chinese with four points on the trot.
Li Xuerui, the top seed, knocked out the fifth seed Wang Yihan, also of China 14-21, 21-15, 21-12.
The other semifinal will be between China’s Wang Shixian and Carolina Marin of Spain. Wang defeated Japan’s Nozomi Okuhara 21-19, 15-21, 22-20 while Marin, the world number two who is seeded sixth here, ended the run of Cheung Ngan Yi of Hong Kong 21-12, 21-9.
In the men’s event, top seed Chen Long of China entered the semifinals with a 21-16, 21-11 win over Kento Momota of Japan while number two seed Jan O Jorgenson of Denmark progressed after a 21-9, 21-15 romp over Wei Nan of Hong Kong.
Two-time Olympic champion Lin Dan also advanced, getting past compatriot Tian Houwei 11-21, 21-16, 21-13. In another quarterfinal, Wang Zhengming of China got the better off compatriot Xue Song 21-16, 21-16.
Published 03 April 2015, 20:53 IST