French Open: Saina Nehwal knocked out by Tai Tzu Ying, loses 12th successive game to her

Paris, Oct 27: Saina Nehwal's jinx of not winning against Tai Tzu Ying continued when the Indian shuttler suffered her 12th successive defeat against her Chinese Taipei opponent, despite taking initial leads in the quarter-finals of French Open BWF World Tour Super 750 tournament here on Friday (October 26).

The Olympic medallist Indian shuttler looked in good touch initially but couldn't match the pace of Tzu Ying, later on, to squander four-game points and lose the opening game.

The Hyderabadi shuttler was no match to her rival in the second and eventually went down 20-22 11-21 in the quarterfinals. Tzu Ying showed incredible temperament and determination to seal the contest after being 9-16 and 16-20 down in the opening game.

. #SainaNehwal puts up incredible fight

Leading the first game 16-9; @NSaina played her heart out before going down 20-22; 11-21 to #TaiTzuYing. Cracking the #TaiCode is not far, cheer up champ! #IndiaontheRise #badminton #FrenchOpenSuper750 pic.twitter.com/Zibso7I1t1

— BAI Media (@BAI_Media) October 26, 2018

Saina yet again failed to crack the Tzu Ying code as she lost to the Chinese Taipei shuttler in the finals last week at Denmark Open. Tzu Ying now has an overwhelming 14-5 head-to-head record against Saina.

Earlier, Indian ace PV Sindhu advanced to the quarterfinals with a straight-game win over Japan's Sayaka Sato but B Sai Praneeth crashed out in men's singles on Thursday night.

Sindhu, seeded third, dished out a compact game to outwit Sayaka 21-17 21-16 in a second-round match on Thursday to set up a clash with seventh-seeded Chinese He Bingjiao.

However, Praneeth was no match to Asian Games champion Jonatan Christie of Indonesia, going down 16-21 14-21 in a men's singles match. The men's doubles pairs of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty and Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy too put up a good show, progressing to the quarterfinals with straight game wins.

While Satwik and Chirag defeated China's He Jiting and Tan Qiang 21-13 21-19, Manu and Sumeeth stunned third-seeded Chinese combination of Liu Cheng and Zhang Nan 21-14 21-16 in another match.

However, it was curtains for Meghana Jakkampudi and Poorvisha S Ram as the duo went down 15-21 13-21 to fourth-seeded Indonesian pair of Greysia Polii and Apriyani

(With PTI inputs)