HS Prannoy enters quarters, Kidambi Srikanth crashes out

Kidambi Srikanth

Indian shuttler H S Prannoy progressed to the quarterfinals but title contender Kidambi Srikanth crashed out after suffering a narrow defeat to China's Huang Yuxiang in the USD 1000,000 All England Championship here. The unseeded Prannoy, who came into the tournament after recovering from foot warts, outwitted former world no 3 and 2014 world championship bronze medallist Tommy Sugiarto of Indonesia 21-10 21-19 in a pre-quarterfinal match.

The world no 3 had defeated Yuxiang, ranked 42, to claim the 2016 Syed Modi Grand Prix Gold title but Srikanth failed to see off the unseeded Chinese at the Arena Birmingham, losing 11-21 21-15 20-22 in a 52 minute battle. "I didn't start well but then I came back really well in both the games. I missed out on easy points in the third," Srikanth said. "Well, there were too many service faults in opening game. I didn't expect that to happen. Yesterday I didn't get any, today it was totally changed. That should not happen in a tournament. There should be a specific rule." The umpire couldn't find faults yesterday (on Wednesday) but today the umpire sitting found too many faults. It is ridiculous," an upset Srikanth said.

Prannoy, who slipped to world no 16 after missing a few tournaments earlier in the year, will now face Yuxiang in the quarters. India's rising doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty played their heart out before losing to the second seeded Danish combo of Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen 21-16 16-21 23-21 in an hour and three minutes.

"We are playing better. we need more experience. We got 2-3 service faults in crucial moments. we were down in first game and it was same till the end. In the second we could pull off but in the third game we were neck and neck," Satwik said. "We lost three times to them, it was always close. Unfortunate today after every two points in crucial points we had service faults. This is our first All England, so there is a little bit of nerves. We were bit unlucky today," Chirag said.

The mixed doubles pair of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N Sikki Reddy, however, failed to put up a fight against second seeds Wang Yilyu and Huang Dongping of China, losing 6-21 10-21 in just 24 minutes. Olympic silver medallist P V Sindhu will clash with seventh seeded Japanese Nozomi Okuhara in a re-match of the World Championship final, which went down in history as one of the longest and greatest battles, clocking 110 minutes.

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