India bite the dust

Ratchanok had had an average quarterfinal against Sindhus sparring partner Arundhati Pantwane,where she lost a game,but she was unlikely to have two poor games in a row. And in their first encounter,the number of options Ratchanok brought out to the court was too much for the Indian. Sindhu matched Ratchanok in the early exchanges as the two sized each other up. Sindhu would stretch the lead to 9-6 but that would be the high point as Ratchanok got going.

Mixing it up

With the court playing slow,much of Sindhus smash advantage was nullified although,to be fair,the Thai scarcely allowed her to use it much. Ratchanok mixed up her hard drives that pushed Sindhu back with soft touches that lured her to the net. The shots came from both sides of the court and Sindhu was repeatedly left wrong footed.

Ratchanok took the lead 10-9 with a cross court drop that followed a drive,leaving Sindhu too far back and led into the changeover with another deceptive drop. As the gap continued widening,Sindhu started giving away points on errors and the few points she would add,came through uncharacteristic mistakes from Ratchanok. A push that went long gave Ratchanok game point and a return error gave her the game.

If the first game had been disappointing,the second would be simply painful. As the So So Thailand! roughly,lets go Thailand chants from the significant Thai section got louder,she stretched her lead to 9-2 and then 16-3. The Thai seemed to find spaces at will on Sindhus side of the court while the Indian never seemed to get an opportunity to pressure her opponent. Sindhu managed to pull the score up to 16-6 but any hopes of getting to partly respectable double digits would soon be dashed as the Thai set up a final clash with Juliane Schenk.

But Pawar,playing his first Super Series semi would play into his opponents hands. The Japanese is an incredible retriever and Pawar,instead of counteracting his opponents strength by speeding up the game,counter-intuitively slowed things down.

The two courts he had played on previously had showed a marked drift and Pawar said he thought he was playing on the faster side.

It the court was just slow throughout. I didnt realise that until halfway through the first game. So I kept slowing down the shuttle and that suited him very well. He was very good defensively and the slow shuttles helped him out more. I was pushing my opponents back in the earlier games but that didnt work against him, he said. The Japanese kept himself in the game on several occassions when Pawar failed to close out the point and finally killed the point or forced the error himself.

While Tago acknowledged he had a great game,he undoutedly has a tougher final against a far more perceptive and faster opponent in Lee Chong Wei against whom he has a 0-12 record. Chong Wei reached his third consecutive final in India beating Thailands Boonsak Ponsanna for the 11th straight time. The Malaysian had a slow start and made a bunch of errors to lose the second game but powered down the home stretch to record a 21-11 18-21 21-8 win.