It turned out to be a great day for the Indian continent in singles at the 2017 Malaysia Masters as both Saina Nehwal and Ajay Jayaram made it to the quarter-finals of this Grand Prix Gold tournament in Sibu, Sarawak, Malaysia on Thursday. While women’s singles top seed Saina Nehwal crushed Hanna Ramadini, 21-17, 21-12, men’s singles sixth seed Ajay Jayaram notched up a 21-12, 15-21, 21-15 win over Hsueh Hsuan Yi.
But curtains came down for the Indian doubles pairs as all of them exited in the second round.
Dominant performance from Saina Nehwal
Saina Nehwal is the top seed and has been playing like one at this tournament. She had dropped just 17 points in her first round match on Wednesday.
Picking up from where she had left, she opened up a 5-3 lead over the World No. 46 Ramadini in the first game today. Even though the Indonesian reduced the deficit to just one point, the India No. 2 was able to jump to 11-7 at the interval.
Rejuvenated after the break, Ramadini came out all guns blazing to close the gap to just a solitary point at 14-15 and continued the gritty fight till 16-17. After that, a determined Saina broke away to bag the opener, 21-17.
In the second game, Nehwal asserted herself early on and inched ahead to a 6-4 advantage which she extended to an 11-5 lead at half-time. Ramadini brought forth her fighting skills once again post-break to close in on 12-14.
But that was all she could do as the top seed simply accelerated from there on, winning the next seven points to clinch the win in 42 minutes.She next faces the eighth seed Fitriani Fitriani for a place in the semi-finals.
In doubles, the third-seeded men’s doubles combine of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy snatched a game but went down fighting 17-21, 21-18, 12-21 to the unseeded Indonesian duo of Hendra Aprida Gunawan and Markis Kido.
Attri also tasted defeat in mixed doubles when he and Jwala Gutta lost 18-21, 10-21 to the sixth seeds Tontowi Ahmad and Gloria Emanuelle Widjaja.
Prajakta Sawant too had a double whammy. She and Aparna Balan were beaten 18-21, 14-21 by the second seeds Chiang Kai Hsin and Hung Shih Han in women’s doubles while in mixed, Sawant and Yogendran Khrishnan succumbed to a 17-21, 17-21 defeat to eighth seeds Yong Kai Terry Hee and Wei Han Tan.
Arjun MR and Shlok Ramchandran were the second team in men’s doubles, who bowed out with a 14-21, 17-21 loss to Law Cheuk Him and Lee Chun Hei Reginald.
