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What’s the story?
Having scraped through the quarter-final match with a 20-22, 21-18, 21-18 win over former champion Nozomi Okuhara at the All England Open 2018 in Birmingham on Friday, the look of relief on PV Sindhu’s face was evident. Honest as ever, the first thing that the Rio Olympic silver medallist admitted after her huge win was that the epic could have been anybody’s game until the very last point.
In a video released by the Yonex All England Twitter handle, the 22-year-old also lauded her Japanese opponent, saying that, “She also played a good game.”
In case you didn’t know
This was the 10th meeting between the two and with this win, Sindhu evened the head-to-head record at 5-5. Out of those, eight matches have gone the distance, with the highlight being their epic final at the 2017 World Championships, which clocked 110 minutes.
The heart of the matter
The highly mature Sindhu did not hesitate to add that she did make mistakes, which she could have avoided in that marathon 1 hour 24 minutes classic.
‘I know there were errors where I actually missed -- hitting outside or hitting into the net. But I think I have to just control them and put them inside the court.”
Elaborating on the match further, the Pullela Gopichand protégé said that even though it did not have any 72-shot rally like the one they had at the World Championships last year, it was nonetheless a long match and that both of them played well.
“She played a brilliant game. It was not so easy to get points from her where we actually ended up playing long rallies like the World Championships almost,” said Sindhu.
“Maybe it was not so long a match but the game went three long sets. There were long, huge rallies but not like 72-shot rallies. Overall, it was a good game from both of us,” she added.
What’s next?
Sindhu will next take on the second seeded Akane Yamaguchi, who beat former champion Carolina Marin in the quarter-finals.
Author’s take
The two fascinated the badminton world with yet another spellbinding match, just like what was expected of them. The Sindhu vs Okuhara rivalry has now developed into the most-watched and most-admired rivalry in current women’s singles.
Let us hope they can keep giving fans such blockbuster matches time and again.
