Sindhu enters third round, Jwala-Ashwini pair exits

P V Sindhu stormed into the third round of the World Badminton Championships with a straight-games victory over Olga Golovanova of Russia, in Copenhagen, on Wednesday.

In the men's doubles, the Indian pair of Manu Attri and Sumeeth Reddy stunned the 15th seeded Japanese duo of Hirokatsu Hashimoto and Noriyasu Hirata, winning 21-19, 21-19 in 44 minutes to advance to the third round.

However, it was curtains for the women's doubles pair of Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa. They lost their second round match to the fifth seeded Chinese combination of Qing Tian and Yunlei Zhao.

Manu and Sumeeth will face the winner of the match between Korea's Yong Dae Lee and Yeon Seong Yoo and Australia’s Raymond Tam and Glenn Warfe.

Sindhu, seeded 11th, took 40 minutes to prevail over the Russian 21-12, 21-17 in the second round match at the Ballerup Super Arena.

Sindhu, who won 42 points as compared to 29 by the Russian, will next take on sixth seed Yeon Ju Bae of Korea.

The world No. 12 from Hyderabad looked a bit rusty to start with and initially trailed in the opening game. She played catch-up till 10-10 before reeling off four consecutive points to surge ahead to 14-10.

There was no looking back thereafter, as the Indian swiftly sealed the game after Golovanova earned just two more points.

In the second game, the Russian got her act together and opened up a big lead, moving to 11-6 at the break. But just when it seemed that the match would go into the decider, Sindhu earned five points on the trot to level the scores at 11.

Thereafter, it was a neck-and-neck battle before Sindhu used all her experience to take a slight lead and eventually seal the issue and advance to the next round.

Earlier, the world No. 7 Chinese duo outplayed the Glasgow Commonwealth Games silver medallist combo of Jwala and Ashwini to win 21-16, 21-8 in just 31 minutes.

With this victory the Chinese girls extended their unbeaten lead over the Indians to 7-0.

Later in the day, the India duo of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and Akshay Dewalkar pulled off a stunning 21-15, 21-17 win over Ki Jung Kim and Sa Rang Kim of Korea to move into the next round.