Saina storms into second round

Bengaluru, November 15: Saina Nehwal, who recently won the National badminton championship, won her women's singles opener to enter the second round of the $700,000 China Open Superseries Premier in Fuzhou on Wednesday (November 15).

World No 11 Saina beat Beiwen Zhang 21-12, 21-13 in 30 minutes in her third win over the American in as many meetings.

Saina, who won the tournament in 2014 and reached the women's singles final the next year, will take on Japanese fifth seed Akane Yamaguchi, in the next round.

The World No 4 has a 3-1 advantage over the Hyderabadi in career meetings and has beaten Saina three times the two faced each other this year.

Earlier, the campaign for Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty got over in the opening round itself as Chinese fifth seeds Liu Cheng and Zhang Nan won 21-13, 21-13.