In a rare week for Indian badminton where the men completely outshone the women, Srikanth Kidambi and B Sai Praneeth have set up a first-ever all-India final in the history of Superseries tournaments with each winning his respective semi-final in straight games on Saturday.
First it was the 30th ranked Sai, who overturned a 0-1 head-to-head deficit against the 35th ranked Lee Dong Keun to reach his maiden Superseries final with an impeccable 21-6, 21-8 win in 38 minutes. Kidambi then overcame a slow start to join him in that much-coveted summit clash with a 21-13, 21-14 win over the 26th ranked Anthony Sinisuka Ginting in 42 minutes.
Sai Praneeth, the former junior World Championships bronze medallist, made a lot of firsts this week. Prior to this week, he had never even made it to a semi-final of any Superseries event and now he is in the final of one.
After upsetting the eighth seed and World No. 11 Tanongsak Saensomboonsuk in the last-eight on Friday, he came storming out of the blocks and never, ever relinquished his advantage in what was an absolutely stunning performance. He raced ahead to a 10-0 lead before his opponent could even get on the board.
There was no looking back for Sai as Lee did not have any answer to counter the Indian’s onslaught in a thoroughly one-sided show.
In the second game, Sai built a 9-1 lead and the closest Lee ever came was when he trailed by six points at 4-10. Sai simply kept increasing the gap before closing out the spectacular win.
Srikanth overcomes slow start
In contrast, the former World No. 3 Srikanth Kidambi had a difficult start. It was Ginting who dictated the match early on and soared to 8-3 in no time. But it was at 10-6 where the match turned as the former China Open champion got into his groove. Controlling the net beautifully and attacking the backhand wing of the Indonesian relentlessly, Srikanth went on a run of 10 straight points to go up 16-10 in a mind-blowing turnaround.
Having wrapped up the first game 21-13, he built an early lead of 9-1 in the second game too before Ginting found some of his fighting spirit. As Srikanth erred a few times, Ginting came back to 14-16, making it just a two-point gap between them.
But that is where Srikanth accelerated to the finish line to advance to his first final since winning the Syed Modi International in January, 2016.
