55 minutes was all it took to seal a spot in the semifinals for Indian badminton player Pusarla Venkata Sindhu (PV Sindhu), who played against world no 2 Yihan Wang of China at the RIO Olympics 2016. The match that consisted of long rallies was a thrilling close finish scripting 22-20 and 21-19.
Sindhu managed to stay calm in crucial moments and that helped her through both the sets. She also felt that this was one of her most satisfying wins and that off all the games she has played with Wang, this was the best and that she hopes it will be fiercer here onwards.
Wang played wonderful shots in the first game. Though she was leading by few points, the tides were tuning in favor of Sindhu and she began climbing up the later until a point where neither of them could score a point. Both played brilliantly.
Sindhu’s coach Puella Gopichand was all praise for the star and he said that she gave a spirited performance. Though Sindhu had the lead in the second game, Wang made a wonderful comeback with 6 consecutive points but Sindhu finished it off in an aggressive style.
When Wang started to attack her opponent’s forehand, Sindhu stopped it with great smashes which showed her grit and determination to finish the match. In my opinion, Sindhu can challenge the best shuttlers in the world if she keeps this performance intact. According to her coach, she could still give better performances as she is still young and does make few errors where she loses leads.
The match witnessed intense rallies, that took up most of the time and with Sindhu giving the finishing touches with her smashes even though initially Wang’s perfect placements made the world no 11 commit few mistakes.
From 3-0 to 22-20, Sindhu came back firing on all cylinders as the second game point final saw Sindhu with a powerful smash onto Wang’s body. The final blow was there for all of us to see when Wang made an unforced error.
Sindhu is all set to play Nozomi Okuhara of Japan in the semi-finals today at IST 7:30 PM.
