America
Jwala-Ashwini enter Canada Open semis
Calgary, June 27
India's most successful
badminton pair Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa earned a straight games
win to enter the women's doubles semi-finals of the $50,000 Canada Open
Grand Prix at the Markin MacPhail Centre here.
The third seeds,
who matched their best ever ranking of No.13 on Thursday, needed only 27
minutes to move past the Hong Kong combine of Chan Kaka Tsz Ka and Yuen
Sin Ying 21-19, 21-13 on Friday in the first ever meeting between the
two pairs.
The first game was quite a neck-and-neck affair right
till the end. It was only at 19-all that the Indian combine found legs
to win the next two points to seal the game in their favour.
The
second game was also fought pretty much at the same level till 13-all
when Jwala and Ashwini won eight successive points to close the game and
match in their favour.
This is the World No.13 pair's second
successive semi-final entry after reaching the penultimate stage last
week at the US Open Grand Prix Gold.
The Indian pair, who won the
2011 World Championship bronze, will next take on the Japanese
combination of Shiho Tanaka and Koharu Yonemoto. One would expect the
multiple Commonwealth Games medallists to ease through the semis as
their opponents are ranked way below at No.98.
However, it was
the end of the road for the other Indian shuttlers -- Ajay Jayaram, B.
Sai Praneeth and women's doubles pair of Pradnya Gadre and N. Sikki
Reddy -- all of whom lost their respective quarter-final matches.
Men's
singles top seed Marc Zwiebler of Germany accounted for ninth seeded
Jayaram, who lost 16-21, 15-21 in 34 minutes. Tenth seed Sai followed
his compatriot as he went down to former World No.1 Lee Chong Wei of
Malaysia 13-21, 21-18, 11-21 in a 51-minute battle. Then, Hong Kong pair
Poon Lok Yan and Tse Ying Suet defeated Pradnya and Sikki 21-18, 23-25,
21-15 in 58 minutes.