Orleans Masters Badminton Saina, Ashwini-Sikki enter semis

ORLEANS: Indian ace Saina Nehwal eked out a thrilling three-game win over USA's Iris Wang to advance to the women's singles semifinals of the Orleans Masters badminton tournament in Paris on Friday.

It is the first semifinals in two years for world no. 20 Saina, who is desperate to accumulate ranking points to make it to her fourth Olympics at the Tokyo Games. Her last semifinal appearance was in January 2019 in the Indonesia Masters 500 tournament which she had won.

The fourth seeded Indian, who had withdrawn from the All England Championships last week due to an injury, had to dug deep to script a 21-19 17-21 21-19 win over world no. 36 Wang in a gruelling quarterfinals match that lasted exactly an hour.

Commonwealth Games bronze medallists Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy, seeded eighth, also entered the last four stage of the women's doubles competition after notching up a stunning 21-14 21-18 win over England's third seeded duo of Chloe Birch and Lauren Smith.

The world no. 25 Indian pair will face top seeded Thailand combination of Jongkolphan Kititharakul and Rawinda Prajongjai.

The Indian men's doubles pair of Krishna Prasad Garaga and Vishnu Vardhan Goud Panjala outwitted world no. 47 French duo of Christo Popov and Toma Junior Popov 21-17 10-21 22-20 in an hour and three minutes to make it to the semifinals.

The unheralded Indian duo will face England's Callum Hemming and Steven Stallwood for a place in the final on Saturday.

The English pair had ended the campaign of Indian seventh seeds MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila 21-19 18-21 23-21 in the quarterfinals. Agencies

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