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Saina Nehwal has been the news across the country for the last few days. The 25-year-old shuttler became the first player from the country to enter the final of the Badminton World Championships, where she succumbed to Spain’s Carolina Marin in straight games, 21-16 21-19.
That defeat was Saina’s second against the Spaniard and both losses have come in 2015, the earlier one coming in the final of the 2015 All England Open, where the Indian, despite having won the opening game, lost the second one and the decider to finish runners-up.
She, however, has beaten Marin on three occasions and will be looking to further strengthen her record against her in the near future.
There has been talk about how the likes of Saina, Marin, Ratchanok Intanon have helped reduce China’s domination of the sport, but the Indian actually has an extremely poor record against the highest ranked Chinese player and 2012 Olympic gold medalist Li Xuerui.
In the 9 meetings between the two, Li has won on 7 occasions while Saina has won the other two. Those two victories came in 2010 and 2012 respectively and she will look to win on a more consistent basis against her in the upcoming tournaments and better her head-to-head record in the process.
Against the World No.4 Tzu Ying Tai, Saina has a 5-5 record, but crucially has ended up on the losing side in 4 out of the last 5 occasions, with her last win over her coming at the 2013 Swiss Open.
Saina’s record against World No.5 Ratchanok Intanon is also very good, with her recording wins on 6 out of the 9 occasions that they met in various tournaments. One of them was a historic victory that came at the India Open in March when Saina became the number one ranked player in the world for the first time.
The 2012 Olympic bronze medalist may have beaten her in the quarterfinal of the World Championships, but her record against China’s Wang Yihan is a pretty poor one- having lost 9 out of the 12 encounters, that includes a defeat at the 2012 London Olympics and at the 2011 World SuperSeries finals.
Against Wang Shixian, Saina has a 6-7 record and she has been in the losing end to her on two successive occasions in their last two meetings at the 2015 Indonesian Open and Australian Open, respectively.
Saina has had the upper hand over Japan’s Sung Ji Hyun, winning 5 out of the 6 matches and losing just once at the Denmark Open in 2013.
She is yet to lose a match to the 9th ranked Nozomi Okuhara and the 10th ?ranked Akane Yamaguchi of Japan.
