Kuala Lumpur, Jan 7: Indian badminton star PV Sindhu, returning from a long injury lay-off, defeated Chinese-Taipei’s Sung Shuo Yun in the women’s singles opening round to secure a place in the pre-quarterfinals of the Malaysia Open Super 1000 tournament here on Wednesday.
The 30-year-old former world champion, who had opted to withdraw from all BWF World Tour events in October last year to focus on recovering from a foot injury, beat Sung 21-14, 22-20 in just over 51 minutes.
However, the mixed doubles pair of Dhruv Kapila and Tanisha Crasto, ranked 17th in the world, bowed out in the round of 32 after losing to the lower-ranked American duo of Presley Smith and Jennie Gai 15-21, 21-18, 15-21 following a hard-fought 56-minute contest.
The 18th-ranked Sindhu showed no signs of discomfort as she overcame the lower-ranked Sung for the second time to take her head-to-head to 2-0 and set up a round-of-16 clash with world No.9 Tomoka Miyazaki of Japan.
Miyazaki advanced after her 10th-ranked opponent, Sim Yu Jin of South Korea, retired hurt when the Japanese was leading 21-19, 1-2.
A dominating Sindhu took an early 6-2 lead and did not look back as she overpowered her opponent in the opening game.
However, the second game turned out to a fiercely-contested one with Sindhu trailing 4-11 at one stage before finally levelling it at 13-all.
But an unrelenting 28-year-old Sung kept pushing and took a three-point lead at 17-14 before the Indian again displayed her fighting qualities to claw back and level at 17-all.
At 20-all, Sindhu grabbed the decisive last two points to win the contest.
Ace Indian men’s doubles pair of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy will play their opening-round match against the Chinese-Taipei duo of Yang Po-Hsuan and Lee Jhe-Hue later in the day. (PTI)
