Saina enters Semis of China Open

Top seed Saina Nehwal stormed into the semifinal of the China Open badminton tournament with a 21-16, 21-13 win against Japan’s Nozomi Okuhara in Fuzhou on Friday.

Saina was put under pressure by her opponent and the Chinese crowd who was behind her but she kept her nerve to lose only one point from 17-all to pocket the game and enter the final. She has won a Bronze medal at the London Olympics in 2012. After the interval, Wang fought back well to level the score at 11-11 before Saina took the lead again and then dominated her way to winning the first game 21-13. This is Saina’s third consecutive victory against the reigning Asian Games gold medallist, all coming in 2015, bettering her record to 4-9. It was far better show than the hard-fought win over Malaysia’s jin Yi Tee on Thursday.

The 25-year-old Saina was easily the superior player on court against Yihan. She varied the pace well and did not give any chance to Nozomi to settle in the game.

This will be Saina’s fifth final of the year as she won two out of the four finals in 2015. In the end, Saina came up with a controlled push at the nets, which Okuhara had no clue to move to 20-14 and then she closed out the match with another deceptive low return at the net to seal a place in the semi-finals. Wang is the toughest rivals, who have beaten her nine times.