Although not initially, the second semifinal tie in the Indian Badminton League on Thursday became interesting later on. In fact, Markis Kido and Pia Z Bernadet captured the issue for Awadhe Warriors over Mumbai Masters by a 3-2 margin. The duo trounced Tine Baun and Vladimir Ivanov by 21-19, 21-15 in the deciding mixed doubles tie.
Hence, Awadhe Warriors will lock horns with Hyderabad Hotshots in the final on Saturday.
World No. 1 Lee Chong Wei gave Mumbai Masters a good start. His opponent RMV Gurusaidutt fought hard with the Malaysian and the crowd.
The loud cheering from the sparse crowd, which included cricketers Stuart Binny, Vinay Kumar, Bharat Chipli and former cricket stars Sunil Gavaskar (the co-owner of Masters) and GR Viswanath made the tie somewhat interesting.
In fact, Lee was in a world of his own. He did not have to use much of his game against Gurusaidutt. Actually, the Malaysian opted to a lot of drops and dribbles that the Warriors’ player found difficult to retrieve. However, there were a couple of occasions when Gurusaidutt paid his opponent back in the same coin. This was the moment when Gurusaidutt chose to net play.
Gurusaidutt did not trail Lee by too much in the first game. But the latter had the confidence of control which made Lee to seal the first game rather easily at 21-15. On the other side, the second was a sail-through for him. Lee did not break a sweat and with a 21-7 win in the second game, pushed Masters up at 1-0.
Remarkably, the women’s singles match between Masters’ Tine Baun and Warriors’ PV Sindhu was anticipated to be a rigid one. But it resulted in just a bit better compared to the first men’s singles. Apparently, it was pale compared to the league match when the duo played here last week. Amazingly, Sindhu capitalized on the ruling All-England champion Baun’s lacklustre movement in the court. At times, Baun looked clumsy with some of her shots. This only made Sindhu’s work much easier as the Indian acquired some very good placements along with crosscourt pushes. It was apparent that it was not Baun’s day.
Notably, Sindhu had no problem in both the games and led comfortably in both the games. Baun stayed slightly close to Sindhu in the first, but the Indian just pulled away in the second and wrapped up the match with 21-16, 21-13. This brought the tie at 1-1.
Outstandingly, the men’s doubles match went to the favor of Warriors’ as Markis Kido and Mathias Boe hammered Sumeet Reddy and Pranav Jerry Chopra by 21-15, 21-10. But Masters’ Vladimir Ivanov sneaked past K Srikanth by 21-20, 21-19 to level it at 2-2. Particularly, Kido and Bernadet ensured the victory for Awadhe Warriors.
