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On a day of contrasting fortunes for Indian shuttlers, the top seed Sameer Verma entered the semi-finals of the Orleans Masters 2018 held in Orleans, France but fifth seed Parupalli Kashyap crashed out of this Super 100 tournament. Verma did not have it easy and had to fight back from a game down to edge the eighth seed and World No. 49 Lucas Corvee 17-21, 21-19, 21-15 in a marathon quarter-final that lasted 1 hour 8 minutes.
Verma will next take on the fourth seed Mark Caljouw, who ousted former World No. 2 Jan O Jorgensen in another quarter-final.
In the initial stages of the match, Sameer looked a pale shadow of the player, who won the Swiss Open title just last month. He struggled with his speed and accuracy, sending the shuttle wide time and again and allowed his opponent to assert his supremacy with his aggressive game.
The World No. 37 regrouped in the second game and led 17-14 only to see the Frenchman coming back and levelling matters at 19-19. With a crosscourt shot under pressure, the Indian got a game point, which he duly converted.
Corvee led 4-1 in the decider, following which Sameer evened the score and raced ahead to 11-9 heading into the mid-game interval. He was in a pretty comfortable position since then as Corvee failed to produce any more resistance.
2014 Commonwealth Games champion Kashyap could not continue his good run and succumbed to an 18-21, 14-21 defeat to the third seed Rasmus Gemke of Denmark in 48 minutes.
The 31-year-old has suffered from a multitude of injuries over the past couple of years and is looking to climb his way back to the top echelons of the sport now. He began the season by winning the Austrian Open, his first international title in three years.
However, Gemke started well and Kashyap had to play catch-up all the time until the Dane kept increasing his lead in the second game to grab the win.
In men’s doubles, the sixth seeded pair of Francis Alwin and Kidambi Nandagopal squandered a one-game lead to go down 21-19, 14-21, 8-21 to the third seeded German combine of Mark Lamsfuss and Marvin Emil Seidel.
