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India had a flawless day at the Fuzhou China Open 2018 on Day 3 of this Super 750 tournament as PV Sindhu, Kidambi Srikanth, and the men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty progressed into the quarter-finals.
The third seed and 2016 champion Sindhu had the easiest time on court out of the three as she needed only 36 minutes to dismiss the challenge of the World No. 25 Busanan Ongbamrungphan of Thailand 21-12, 21-15. The Rio Olympic silver medallist absolutely cruised through her match and hardly faced any threat from her opponent.
The only semblance of a fight that Ongbamrungphan managed to give Sindhu was when she stormed back from 2-4 down to lead 6-4 and kept it all level till 7-7. Sindhu seized control soon after to race to victory and set up a quarter-final showdown with eighth-seeded He Bingjiao, who beat her in Paris.
2014 winner Srikanth had to do it the hard way, coming back from a game down to edge World No. 10 Tommy Sugiarto 10-21, 21-9, 21-9 in 44 minutes. The World No. 9 trailed their head-to-head record 2-3 before this clash and the fast start from the Indonesian made it obvious that Srikanth was finding it difficult to counter his shots again.
However, the Indian managed to turn it around at the start of the second game by finding his usual aggression and rhythm that he had completely lacked in the opening game. Ever since then, it was all Srikanth as he thoroughly dominated the next couple of games to advance to the quarter-finals against fourth seed Chou Tien Chen.
A day after upsetting the World No. 6 pair of Mads Conrad-Petersen and Mads Pieler Kolding, the 23rd ranked young men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty kept their run going with a 16-21, 21-14, 21-15 comeback victory over World No. 21 Wahyu Nayaka Arya Pangkaryanira and Ade Yusuf Santoso.
In the quarter-finals, they will meet Indonesia’s World No. 14 combine of Hendra Setiawan and Mohammad Ahsan.
