Backed by a vociferous crowd, H. S. Prannoy navigated past a testing phase in the decider against a speedy Wang Tzu Wei for a place in his maiden semifinals of the India Open badminton here on Friday.
In a tense third game, Prannoy bridged a 5-10 deficit to catch up at 14, surged ahead at 17-16 and converted a second match-point for a 21-17, 17-21, 21-19 triumph in 77 minutes.
The eighth seed now faces Chinese sixth seed Shi Yuqi in Saturday’s semifinals.
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In the day’s finale, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty demolished tricky fifth-seeded Danish rivals Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen 21-7, 21-10. Having Denmark’s former doubles specialist Mathias Boe in their corner surely helped the second seeds.
This was only the third victory in nine meetings for the Indians against the Danes. With the World No.1 Chinese pair of Liang Wei Keng and Wang Cheng knocked out after facing their Thai rivals late last night, the Indian pair is the new favourite for the title.
Prannoy to the fore
A match that witnessed frequent exchanges of dribbles and flicks at the nets brought forth the shot-making skills of Prannoy.
He found his rhythm in the opening game and enlarged a 10-3 lead to 18-5 before handing out Wang six straight confidence-boosting points. Though Prannoy sealed the game quickly thereafter, Wang suddenly seemed to have sorted a few of his problems.
In the second game, Wang controlled the pace better, executed some very powerful smashes on both flanks and jumped to 13-6 after claiming six straight points. Undeterred, Prannoy clawed back to win seven of the next eight points, closed the gap to 16-17 but lost four of the last five points to find himself in yet another decider.
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