Indian shuttlers Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth have reached the semi finals of the 750,000 Australian Super Series Badminton tournament at Sydney. Saina defeated her Thai rival Ratchanok Intanon in 56-min hard fought women singles battle, while K Srikanth, too defeated a Korean opponent Kwang Hee Heo, to grab the semi final spot in both women’s and men’s singles quarterfinal respectively.

Saina defeated her opponent in a close match by 21-26 28-16. She was attacked by her rival quiet nicely through some awesome badminton skills. After fighting her way to 18-16 lead, Saina played well and it was anybody’s game as her opponent fought back whenever Saina looked to take lead.  

Continuing her performance Saina, opened 11-7 in the second round and through a great performance managed to defeat Ratchanok in quarter finals.

In Men’s singles quarter finals K Srikanth took time to figure out his opponent’s game as he was lagged behind 0-5 early on but he soon back from 2-9 9-14 and turned the tables and grabbed the opening game.

Even though Srikanth managed to get a huge lead of 11-6 in second game  and in reply, the Korean successfully managed to level the scores at 12-12 and again at 16-16, the Indian defeated him as 21-17.

By Prajakt K.