World Badminton Championships: Saina Nehwal enters quarters

Guangzhou (China), Aug 8: Ace Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal rallied from a game down to beat Thailand's Porntip Buranaprasertsuk and enter the quarterfinals of the BWF World Badminton Championships in Guangzhou on Thursday.

Saina, seeded third in the event, beat 15th seed Buranaprasertsuk 18-21 21-16 21-14 in a clash which lasted 52 minutes.

With this win, Saina also kept her all-win record against Buranaprasertsuk intact, having beaten her in their five previous encounters before today.

Saina's most recent win against Buranaprasertsuk came last year during the Thailand Open.

Saina will next take on the winner of other prequarterfinal match between Sayaka Takahashi of Japan and Korea's Yeon Ju Bae, who has been seeded 13th in the event.

Buranaprasertsuk started off strongly today and surprised the Indian with better command over smash winners, sending down 11 of them in the first game.

But Saina regained her composure pretty quickly and roared back in the second game with nine of her trademark smash winners.

She kept up the pressure in the deciding game as well to emerge triumphant after the initial scare.

Rising women's star and tenth seed P V Sindhu will also play her third-round match today against second-seeded and hot favourite Yihan Wang of China.

Parupalli Kashyap is the only other Indian in the fray and he will face sixth seed Yun Hu of Hong Kong in the third round today in the men's singles event.

India's doubles campaign was over on Wednesday when Tarun Kona and Arun Vishnu crashed out in the second round of the men's doubles event.

PTI