India's top shuttlers, P Kashyap and Saina Nehwal, registered contrasting victories to advance to the semifinals of the Indonesia Super Series Premier badminton tournament in Jakarta on Friday.
Kashyap, who had upset top seed Chen Long of China in the second round, once again executed his plans to perfection and did not allow his opponent to settle down in a rhythm to thrash Hans-Kristian Vittinghus of Denmark 21-15, 21-14 in the quarterfinals.
The Commonwealth Games bronze medallist had earlier reached the semifinals of two Super Series tournaments but SS Premier is a grade above.
He will now face seventh seed Simon Santoso of Indonesia for a place in the final.
Saina squeezes through
Later in the day, world number five Saina looked like wrapping her quarterfinal match in a hurry but wasted three match points in the second game and then survived many anxious moments before prevailing 21-17, 21-23, 21-19 over third seed Shixian Wang in one hour 36 minutes.
However, the last eight encounter against the only top five Chinese shuttler against whom Saina has a positive head-to-head looked like an one-sided affair till the half way stage when Saina lead 20-17 in the second game after winning the first.
But a few errors brought the pressure back on the Commonwealth Games gold medallist and the match went into the decider.
Both player's raised the bar in the decider and Shixian refused to give in despite trailing 19-15. She caught up with the Indian but Saina kept her cool and took the next two points to wrap up the match and set up a semifinal date against Korea's Ji Hyun Sung, who accounted for sixth seed Jiang Yangjiao and second seed Xin Wang from China in the last two rounds.
Results (quarterfinals):
Men's singles: P Kashyap bt Hans-Kristian Vittinghus (Denmark) 21-15, 21-14Women's singles: 5-Saina Nehwal bt 3-Shixian Wang (China) 21-17, 21-23, 21-19
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