TheSportsCampus

It was a good day for the Indian seeds at the Asian Badminton Championships in New Delhi today as women's no.1 seed Saina Nehwal and the top seeded mixed doubles pairing of Jwala Gutta and V Diju surged their way to the quarter finals. The tournament has participation of top shuttlers from 21 Asian countries and is being played at the state-of-the-art Siri Fort Sports Complex, the venue that will be used for the badminton event at the Commonwealth Games later this year.

In a big upset of the championship today, men's top seed Taufiq Hidayat from Indonesia made an early exit after he lost to Chinese Taipei's Hsuan Yi Hsueh in straight sets. The match saw a tough battle between the two players before closing in Hsueh wrapping it up in straight sets 22-20, 21-16 on board. Hsueh now faces Kenichi Tago of Japan in the quarterfinals tomorrow.

"It's a game, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose," said Taufiq after his loss.

The women's top seed Saina Nehwal was all about the winning today, defeating a tricky opponent in Julia Pei Xian Wong of Malaysia in straight sets of 21-14, 21-16. Saina is now pitted against another Malaysian shuttler Mew Choo Wong in the quarterfinals tomorrow.

Saina after her win said, "It was a nice match and it's been my best performance in the Asian badminton championships so far. I hope to get good results out of this tournament this time."

Joining Saina in the last eight is compatriot Aditi Mutatkar who defeated Hsiao Huan Chen of Chinese Taipei. She now faces Xin Liu from China tomorrow in the quarter finals.

The top seeded Indian mixed doubles pair of Jwala Gutta and V Diju beat Chinese Taipei's Sheng Mu Lee and Yu Chin Chien in straight sets of 24-22, 21-15 and will now face the Chinese pairing of Zihan Qiu and Quing Tian in the quarter-finals.

"It was a tough and a very fast match but luckily we did not commit any service mistakes as the opponents and that benefited us immensely," said Jwala Gutta, after her win.

The third seed Indian men's doubles team of Sanave Thomas and Rupesh Kumar also moved to the quarterfinal stage today. They now face the Korean pair of Sang Hoon Han and Ji Masn Hwang tomorrow.

Men's Doubles
Rupesh K T Kumar [3] [IND] / Sanave Thomas [IND]
beat [BAN] Rais Md Uddin / [BAN] Jabed Mostafa Md 21-10 21-2
Nguyen Khang Huynh [VIE] / Hoang Nam Nguyen [VIE] beat [IND] Tarun Kona / [IND] Jishnu Sanyal 21-18 12-21 21-16
Hirokatsu Hashimoto [2] [JPN] / Noriyasu Hirata [JPN] beat [IND] Akshay Dewalkar / [IND] Arun Vishnu 21-18 21-15

Women's Doubles
Meiliana Jauhari [INA] / Greysia  Polii [INA] beat [IND] Jwala Gutta / [IND] Ashwini Ponnappa 18-21 21-15 21-17
Aparna Balan [IND] / Shruti Kurian [IND] beat [SIN] Aiying Xing / [SIN] Beiwen Zhang 21-14 21-9

Women's Singles
Aditi Mutatkar [IND] beat [TPE] Hsiao Huan Chen 23-21 21-11
Saina Nehwal [1] [IND] beat [MAS] Julia Pei Xian Wong 21-14 21-16

Men's Doubles (rd 2)
Rupesh K T Kumar [3] [IND] / Sanave Thomas [IND] beat [THA] Patipat Chalardchaleam / [THA] Thitipong Lapoe 21-14 21-15

Mixed Doubles
Diju Valiyaveetil [1] [IND] / Jwala Gutta [IND] beat [TPE] Sheng Mu Lee / [TPE] Yu Chin Chien 24-22 21-15
Pan Pan [6] [CHN] / Qing Tian [CHN] beat [IND] Aparna Balan / [IND] Shruti Kurian 21-10 21-12

Men's Singles
Yun Hu [7] [HKG] beat [IND] Kashyap Parupalli [13] 11-16 18-21 21-13

File Photograph