India's road to the USD 200,000 Japan Open Super Series badminton event concluded on Friday as all the men shuttlers K. Srikanth, H.S. Prannoy and Ajay Jayaram exited from the quarter-finals.
The 56 ranked 21-year-old Prannoy was up first against Huan Gao of China, who is ranked 32. Actually, it was a severe battle that continued for an hour and 13 minutes before the Indian shuttler was ousted. Particularly, the Chinese won the first game comfortably by 21-11 but Prannoy emerged strongly in the second to take the game to 22-20 and along with it leveled the match. However, in the decider, the Indian proved to be the second best to lose the game by 13-21.
Remarkably, a lot of Indian hopes were then pinned on 20-year-old K. Srikanth, who gave his impressive performance in the recently concluded Indian Badminton League. The rising star world no. 39, who won the Thailand Open earlier this year, could not match up with local favorite Kenichi Tago. Srikanth was knocked out in straight games by 18-21, 9-21.
After the two Indian shuttlers exited, the most experienced of the three, 25-year-old Ajay Jayaram arrived to battle with world no. 8 Tien Minh Nguyen and commenced the game in a brilliant fashion. Notably, he spearheaded the first game before waning away towards the fag end to gift success to the Vietnamese player of 21-18. Unfortunately, the world no. 30 Indian couldn’t claw back and lost the second game by 13-21.
World championship bronze medalist and ranked No. 12, India's PV Sindhu was handed a shocking second round defeat by Japanese qualifier Akane Yamaguchi earlier on Thursday. Actually, the eighth-seed Sindhu lost by 6-21 17-21 to the little-known local player in a 32-minute long women's singles match at the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium.
