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Indian shuttlers, B Sai Praneeth and Sameer Verma continue their good run at the Australian Open 2018 as they stormed into the quarter-finals of this Super 300 tournament in Sydney on Thursday. The second seeded Sai needed 32 minutes to assert his supremacy over the 62nd ranked Panji Ahmad Maulana of Indonesia with a 21-12, 21-14 win.
Next up for the 2017 Singapore Open Superseries champion is the seventh seeded Lee Cheuk Yiu.
The World No. 17 Indian is looking to reach a semi-final at a BWF tournament for the second week in a row. Last week, he was the best performing Indian shuttler at the New Zealand Open.
The fourth seeded Verma too was equally impressive against the former World No. 12 Takuma Ueda. The Swiss Open champion got the better of the Japanese 21-16, 21-12 to set up a quarter-final showdown with the 165th ranked Lu Guangzu of China.
Meanwhile, the Indian campaign came to an end in the women’s singles category as Vaishnavi Reddy Jakka was outplayed 5-21, 5-21 by World No. 97 Han Yue of China.
Indians face off in doubles
Indians are assured of a place in the semi-finals in men’s doubles after the third seeded combine of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy set up a quarter-final meeting with the seventh seeds MR Arjun and Shlok Ramchandran.
Attri and Reddy, the reigning Indian national champions, emerged 21-17, 21-17 winners over Korea’s Hyuk Gyun Choi and Park Kyung Hoon. The former India No. 1 pair has now reached quarter-finals in back-to-back weeks, following their appearance in the last-eight stage at Auckland.
Arjun and Shlok staved off a big challenge in the second game to register a 21-15, 25-23 win over Japan’s Hiroki Okamura and Masayaki Onodera.
In women’s doubles, Meghana Jakkampudi and Poorvisha S Ram surrendered 11-21, 13-21 to Japan’s Miki Kashihara and Miyuki Kato. Poorvisha suffered a double setback as she also lost 6-21, 13-21 to the fifth seeds Seung Jae Seo and Chae Yujung alongside Shivam Sharma in mixed doubles.
