Good afternoon and welcome to the Sportskeeda liveblog of the Austrian Open 2018 semi-finals. The reigning Commonwealth Games champion Parupalli Kashyap is the second seed and takes on the fifth seeded Raul Must of Estonia for a place in the final.
While the Indian is ranked 44th, the Estonian is placed at 66th in the world rankings. But it the lower-ranked player,who leads their head-to-head record 2-1. Must has won their last two meetings as well. So, Kashyap has quite a task on his hands today.
But both those wins came in 2016. Kashyap is playing with a lot more confidence of late. He came to this tournament on the back of a quarter-final finish at the India Open earlier this month and carried that form at this week's Austrian Open to reach his first semi-final of the year.
His quarter-final win over the seventh seeded Victor Svendsen, especially, showed the fighting skills that the former World No. 6 is known for. He came back from an 8-14 deficit in the first game to reel off 10 consecutive points and register a 21-17, 21-19 win. He would hope to continue his winning run today.