Sydney: India’s young shuttler Priyanshu Rajawat stormed into the semifinals of the Australian Open badminton tournament here with upset straight games win against compatriot and former World No.1 Kidambi Srikanth here on Friday.
India’s top men’s singles player H.S Prannoy also caused an upset, beating the top-seeded Indonesian Anthony Sinisuka Ginting in three games to storm into the semifinal where he will run into his compatriot, Priyanshu Rajawat. Prannoy defeated Anthony Ginting 16-21, 21-17, 21-14 in 73 minutes.
Rajawat, the Orleans Masters 2023 champion, cruised through to his first semifinal in a BWF World Tour Super 500 event this year as he got the better of compatriot Srikanth 21-13, 21-8 in men’s singles quarterfinals.
The world no. 31 Indian will face the winner between another compatriot HS Prannoy and Indonesia’s top-seeded Anthony Ginting here on Saturday.
While Priyanshu and Prannoy kept the Indian flag flying in this BWF World Tour event with a total prize fund of US dollar 420,000, compatriot and two-time Olympic medallist P.V. Sindhu crashed out of the event, losing to Malaysia’s fourth-seeded Beiwen Zhang in straight games.
Sindhu lost the quarterfinal encounter 12-21, 17-21 to the Malaysian shuttler. The 28-year-old Indian conceded an early 5-10 lead in the first game and could not recover. The Malaysian player maintained her upper hand in the second game and capitalised on her chances to win the match.
Prannoy conceded an early lead in the first game when Ginting won four points in a row to lead 5-1. He maintained his advantage to win the first game 21-16.
The two players went neck-and-neck in the second game as the lead changed hands more than once till 9-9 before Prannoy won five points in a row to open up a 14-9 lead. He extended the lead to 18-12 and went on to win the second game and levelled the game score 1-1.
Prannoy started the decider on a strong note and took a 4-0 lead before Anthony Ginting reduced it to 4-3 and levelled scores at 5-5. Prannoy surged to an 8-5 lead and though his Indonesian opponent brought the score down to 8-7, the Indian World No.9 won five consecutive points to go 13-7 up.
Ginting was not done yet and again fought back to 15-13 but Prannoy could not be thwarted and went on to win the game and match at 21-14.
–IANS