Olympics bronze medalist Saina Nehwal regained the world No. 3 ranking after she scored a huge win of 21-16, 21-13 against Sapsiree Taerattanachai of Thailand during their pre-quarterfinals of the Yonex French Open Super Series held in Paris on Thursday. It was a moment of jubilation for the Hyderabad player who had recently won the Denmark Open after overcoming the Chinese challenge in style. Though her persistent knee injury was still bothersome, it was the ample support she received from her coach Gopichand that made her to find her winning ways back. During the year 2011, Saina lost her third rank in April only to claim it back after gaining 11000 points with crucial wins during the championship in Denmark.
The Indian ace shuttler is now trailing behind Olympic gold medalist Li Xuerui and world champion Wang Yihan who have 85926.7153 and 93232.7491 points against them respectively. If she manages to win the French Open in Paris, then she will obtain an additional 3000 points to extend her tally. It must be remembered that Saina reached her career-best No.2 rank back in 2010 and have to show more consistency in winning titles to hold onto the top spot. However, she has been recently back from the London games and it needs to be seen that how she will be able to carry herself physically after winning a bronze at the Olympics.
Saina struggled against her Wednesday’s match against Li Han of China as she was unable to view the bird properly as she had problems at one side of the court. However, she appeared at her best again after registering an emphatic win against Sapsiree. At one point of time, the Thai player appeared to inch closer towards Saina when the game was equally poised at 13-13., but there was no looking back for the Indian after that as there was little resistance from Sapsiree. Eventually, she won the game with 21-16 in the end.
Winning the 2nd set was even much easy with no challenge from Sapsiree. It was Saina’s show all the way as she finished in style by winning the set 21-13 while the Thai was left clueless. Initially, the widening margin of 11-7 did boost the confidence of the Indian eventually resulting in a match that has been won spectacularly won by here. "It was a nice game. She is very active on court and is basically a smash player. But I was ready for her every move. It's a great feeling to be back again at No. 3," said Saina during the post-match conference.
Saina has emerged as a clear favorite with the exclusion of a string of Chinese players like second seed Shixian Wang who won Asian Games and sixth seed Yanjiao Jiang. More specifically, it was the exit of Shixian that has done more damage for others such as Tine Baun of Denmark, Juliane Schenk of Germany and three-time world junior champion, Ratchanok Intanon of Thailand. She will be pitted against Ratchanok against whom she got an impressive record of 3-1.
