Saina Nehwal enters All England quarterfinals

Saina zooms, but CWG gold winners Jwala Jutta and Ashwini Ponappa make early exit in Doubles

Saina zooms, but CWG gold winners Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponappa make early exit in Doubles

Indian ace Saina Nehwal overcame the challenge of Chinese Taipei's Tzu Ying Tai 21-17, 21-17 to advance to the quarter-finals of the All-England Badminton Championships, one of the world's oldest and most prestigious badminton tournaments.


Progressing: Saina Nehwal

The World No 5 will take on Japan's Eriko Hirose, world No 17, in the last eight. The ace shutter had defeated South Korea's Seung He Bae in the first round. Saina however was the only Indian shuttler left in the tournament as all her compatriots had already crashed out.

In the mixed doubles, V Diju and Jwala Gutta lost to the fifth seeded Chinese pair of Tao Jiaming and Qing Tian 11-21 12-21 in a round two match.In the women's doubles, the duo of Gutta and Ashwini Ponappa suffered heartbreak as they lost to Denmark's Line Damkjaer Kruse and Marie Roepke 17-21 21-19 21-18 in a hard-fought second round match that lasted 53 minutes.

In the men's doubles, Rupesh Kumar and Sanave Thomas lost to eighth seeds Indonesian pair of Mohammad Ahsan and Bona Septano 16-21 16-21 in the second round.

Men fail too
In men's singles, P Kashyap, Anand Pawar and Ajay Jayaram had already crashed out of the tournament in the first round.Saina dominated Chinese Taipei opponent with some intelligent net-play and with some power-packed smashes.

The first was a keen tussle between the two right upto, first 8-8 and then 14-14. However, Saina kept her cool to take five straight points thereon and race to 19-14 before taking the set. The second too went down to the wire with the score reading 17-17 at one stage. But India's Commonwealthu00a0 Games gold medallist used all her experience and went on to take four consecutive points to take the set and with it the match.