It turned out to be a good Friday for the Indian badminton contingent at the $350,000 OUE Singapore Open as B Sai Praneeth came from behind to edge the eighth seed and World No. 11 Tanongsak Saensomboonsuk of Thailand and enter the semi-finals. Sai, who has climbed to his career-best rank of 30 this week, lost the first game but rebounded in stunning fashion to take the 15-21, 21-14, 21-19 win in 1 hour 11 minutes.
First win in three meetings for Sai
Sai had never beaten the Thai in two previous meetings even though he did take a game off Tanongsak in their most recent showdown at the 2016 Denmark Open.
Expectedly, it was the eighth seed who made the brighter start and quickly built a 4-0 lead before the Indian could even settle into the match. However, the World No. 30 did manage to steadily make his mark and cut down the lead to just a solitary point at 9-10.
He once again pushed hard to trail at 15-16 but the Thai finished the opening game strongly by bagging five points in a row.
Sai produced a fantastic turnaround in the second game and never looked close to relinquishing his lead. Taking control of the proceedings right from the start, he opened up a 6-3 advantage and built on it further for an 11-5 lead at the mid-game interval.
The closest Tanongsak came to Sai was when he banked on his highly aggressive game to close it to 12-15 but Sai wrapped up the second game soon afterwards, 21-14.
It was the World No. 11 who started dominating the decider after breaking away from a 2-2 tie. A determined Sai, however, came back to level matters at 8-8 and then again at 13-13 only to see Tanongsak go up 17-15. It was then that the Indian incredibly turned around the match as he pocketed the next four points to inch ahead 19-17.
Sai carved out two match points and even though the higher-ranked player did save one of them, he could not prevent the Indian from advancing to the semi-finals with a huge smash.
This is the first time that Sai has reached the last-four stage at any Superseries tournament. He will face the winner of the quarter-final contest between Jonatan Christie and Lee Dong Keun.
