Saina storms into quarters of World Championships

With easy victories,Saina has spent less than an hour on the Wembley before qualifying for QF.

Playing her third round match at the Wembley Arena in London on Thursday,Saina Nehwal hardly broke into a sweat while her rapid court movements forced her opponent Hong Kong8217;s Pui Yin Yip to stretch every sinew in her body to reach the shuttle in all four corners of the court. The Hong Kongese seemed devastated right from the onset and her mental and physical fatigue forced her to retire midway through the second set.

With a strong possibility of Nehwal playing the Chinese world number three and last year8217;s Worlds runner-up Xin Wang,she will have to be at her strongest mentally,and according to coach Gopichand,keep up the quick movement and the footwork of the first two games in order to win.

Should the Indian World No 6 run into the Bulgarian Petya Nedelcheva instead,after the late night pre-quarters match determines her next opponent,the slowness of the shuttles means it will be absolutely essential that Nehwal stays nimble on her feet and alert on the run if she hopes to better her quarterfinals appearance at a World Championship that she managed in the last two editions.

The most important thing for Saina in tomorrow8217;s match will be the quickness of her movement on court. If she has a positive start to the game she can go on to win, coach P Gopichand said.

If she indeed does run into her Chinese opponent in the quarterfinal,the match will be an extremely important one according to Gopichand. She had lost to Chinese Shixian Wang in the quarterfinals of the World Championships in Paris and to Lin Wang at Hyderbad in 2009 and Friday8217;s encounter will be crucial in terms of crossing the mental barrier of beating a Chinese opponent in a big tournament.

With easy victories in the first two encounters,Saina has spent less than an hour on the Wembley Arena courts before qualifying for the quarterfinals. Her 21-3,13-5 passage past Pui Yin Yip lasted for only 20 minutes,thus depriving her of a real test before the quarterfinals. This,however,will be an advantage for Saina as far as Gopichand is concerned.

Should she face off against her,Xin Wang will prove to be quite a challenge having proved to be Saina8217;s bane on three previous occasions in the Malaysian Open. But none of the past results will matter as Gopichand will be looking to focus on the job at hand. We are not concerned with the earlier defeats or victories. We have put in some good work in the last five weeks where Saina has not played any competitive tournaments. She will be fresh for Friday.

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While Saina was dismantling her opponent shot by shot,her compatriot Ajay Jayaram was battling it out against defending champion and world number 6 Chen Jin a match that he eventually lost 21-18,12-21,11-21. Jwala Gutta and V Diju also couldn8217;t get past the fifth seeded Denmark pair of Joachim Fischer Nielsen and Christinna Pedersen and lost 9-21,15-21 in a 34 minutes.

Strong show by Wei

Top seed Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia sailed through a potentially tricky test by beating South Korean Park Sung-hwan to book a place in the quarter-finals with a crushing 21-10,21-5 victory.

In last year8217;s tournament in Paris,ninth-seeded Park had put out defending champion Lin Dan and was regarded as a dangerous floater. But Chong Wei was at the top of his formidable game,brushing the Korean aside in 29 minutes.