ME News Bureau: The 22-year-old Olympic silver medalist PV Sindhu hit top gear at the Sheikh Hamdan Indoor Stadium against Japan’s 27-year-old Sayaka Sato, and achieved a thumping 21-13, 21-12 win in a mere 36 minutes. The facile triumph took the Indian’s tally to 3-1 in four career meetings against the Japanese left-hander, with all three wins having come between June and December this year.
PV Sindhu notched up a comfortable straight-game win to make it to the knockout stage but Kidambi Srikanth drooping to his second successive loss to crash out of the Dubai Super Series Final on Thursday.
“Luckily, I did not feel any after-effects of (Wednesday’s) long match against Bingjiao, and my movement on the court was better than it had been yesterday,” said Sindhu. “I am happy to have qualified for the semi-finals, but would like to maintain the momentum in my last group match on Friday.”
Thus, Sindhu now has two wins from as many matches, same as World No. 2 Japanese Akane Yamaguchi. And both of them have booked a compartment each at the knockouts in women's singles. Sindhu and Yamaguchi will clash with each other in their last and final Group A match on Friday.
