Kidambi Srikanth battled past Li Shi Feng to advance to the 3rd round of the ongoing BWF World Championships in Huelva, Spain, on Tuesday.
Playing on court 2, the former World No 1 Indian defeated the Chinese shuttler 15-21, 21-18, 21-17 in a thrilling contest that lasted 70 minutes.
The 12th seeded Indian was stunned in the first game and the World No. 63 Chinese shuttler carried his momentum into the second game as Srikanth was down 9-6 at one point. But Indian recovered quickly, winning 10 straight points to pocket the game 21-18.
The decider went to the wire as Srikanth found another gear and went from trailing by two points in the mid-game interval to lead 15-13. Li tried to block Srikanth, but the Indian held his nerves to win the game 21-17.
Defending champion PV Sindhu breezed past Slovakia's Martina Repiska 21-7, 21-9 to make a resounding start in the BWF World Championship in Huelva, Spain, on Tuesday.
The fast-rising Lakshya Sen prevailed over 15th seeded Japanese Kenta Nishimoto 22-20, 15-21, 21-18 and also progressed to the third round.
In men's doubles, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty beat Chinese Taipei's Lee Jhe-Huei and Yang Po-Hsuan 27-25, 21-17 in 43 minutes.
World number seven Sindhu took just 24 minutes to beat the unseeded opponent on court number 3 of Palacio de los Deportes Carolina Marín Stadium.
Seeded sixth in the tournament, which she won in 2019 -- when it was last held -- the two-time Olympic-medallist began on a rousing note and raced to a 4-1 lead with her fine play.
Repiska tried to make a comeback with two points, but the fancied Indian did not let her go ahead, leading 11-4 at the mid-break.
She continued her dominance and kept accumulating points to widen the lead, eventually pocketing the first game in only 10 minutes.
The script remained the same in the second game as well, with Sindhu maintaining her firm grip over the proceedings to race to a 6-0 lead in just two minutes.
At midpoint, Sindhu was leading 11-1 and she completed the formality with a dominant performance.
Sen was made to toil hard for his victory by the Japanese as he took one hour and 22 minutes to emerge winner.
However, the mixed doubles pairing of Saurabh Sharma and Anoushka Parikh suffered a straight game defeat to Malaysians Tan Kian Meng and Lai Pei Jing, going down 21-8, 21-18.
