Paris, Aug. 27: Ace Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal suffered a straight-game defeat at the hands of sixth seed Chinese Shixian Wang in the women’s singles quarterfinals to crash out of the World Badminton Championship here on Friday.
World number two Saina lost 8-21, 14-21 to Wang in a 34-minute encounter in to draw curtains on India’s challenge in the high-profile tournament.
The second seed Indian, tipped to be one of the hot favourites to win the title, was not at her best and lagged behind right from the start as the Chinese opened up a 3-0 lead in the first game. Though Saina caught up with her opponent at 6-6, Wang pocketed eight straight points to surge ahead and held her fort as the Indian’s game crumbled.
The second game was no better as once again the Chinese opened up a 3-0 lead early and kept widening the margin. The Hyderabadi tried her bit but could not sustain for long.
In other women’s quarterfinals, Tine Baun of Denmark beat Cheng Shao-Chieh of Chinese Taipei 21-18, 21-13 while Lin Wang of China defeated Eriko Hirose of Japan 21-16, 21-17.
There were upsets galore. Defending men’s singles champion Lin Dan of China crashed out in the quarterfinals. South Korea’s Park Sung Hwan beat the three-time world champion 21-13, 21-13. Hwan will next face Taufik Hidayat of Indonesia who knocked out top-ranked Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia 21-15, 11-21, 21-12.
The Indian men’s and women’s doubles teams too crashed out after losing their respective third-round matches. Mixed doubles pair of Jwala Gutta and V. Diju were beaten 21-16, 21-19 by South Korea’s Sung Hyun Ko and Jung Eun.
Jwala also lost her women’s doubles match in the company of Ashwini Ponnappa. The Indian pair went down to Jung Eun Ha and Ming Jung Kim 21-14, 21-15. In men’s doubles, 15th seeds Rupesh Kumar and Sanave Thomas lost to Lars Paaske and Jonas Rasmussen of Denmark 21-16, 21-16.