Sindhu storms into semis; valiant Srikanth goes down fighting

In a day of mixed results for India, PV Sindhu downed World No 2 Wang Yihan 22-2-, 21-19 to march into the semi-finals of the women’s singles while Kidambi Srikanth, despite fighting valiantly against the two-time and reigning Olympics champion Lin Dan, bowed out of the Rio Olympics after losing 6-21, 21-11, 18-21 in the quarter-final game.

In her maiden Olympic Games, Pusarla Venkata Sindhu displayed brilliant maturity and calmness to reach the semi-finals beating the London Olympics’ silver medallist Wang Yihan in straight sets.

With the win, Sindhu became only the second Indian woman to reach an Olympic semi-final after Saina Nehwal did the same in the London Games four years ago.

Sindhu’s strategy of slowing down the game and engaging Wang in long rallies paid rich dividends. Her aggressive yet patient display managed to make Wang dance in all corners of the court and caught her off position many a times that helped Sindhu pick points. Wang looked particularly weak with her backhand and deep forehand that Sindhu made the most of.

The 21-year-old began the match slowly as the Chinese grabbed early lead to mount the pressure on her but the two-time World Championships bronze medallist absorbed the pressure extremely well to stick to her game and caught Wang off position to accumulate points. After trailing for most part of the first game, Sindhu outplayed Wang to pick the first game in 29 minutes.

The second game saw Sindhu surge to an early lead and despite Wang pulling off a superb comeback, the Indian held her nerve and earned two straight points to win the match.

On the other hand, Srikanth got off to a nightmarish start when Lin Dan managed to take complete control of the game and picked up everything that Srikanth threw at him. Srikanth, unable to crack Lin’s game, went down 6-21 in the first set. 

But he staged spirited comeback in the second set where he forced Lin towards the line to eventually catch him on the other side The third set  was an extremely close affair where Srikanth did go into the mid-game break with a lead but Lin roared back into the game.