Indian women’s singles shuttler PV Sindhu and the women’s doubles duo of Tanisha Crasto and Ashwini Ponnappa continued their winning run at the 2024 Spain Masters Super 300 on Thursday.
Sindhu beat Chinese Taipei shuttler Huang Yu-Hsun in straight games to move into the quarter-finals while Crasto-Ponnappa, seeded third in the tournament, needed only 27 minutes to beat their Australian opponents Tiffany Ho and Gronya Somerville 21-14, 21-8.
It was a successful day for the eighth seeds Dhruv Kapila and MR Arjun as well, who beat brothers Christopher and Matthew Grimley from Scotland 21-17, 21-19 in men’s doubles.
The mixed doubles pairing of B Sumeeth Reddy and Sikki Reddy also progressed to the quarter-finals with a 22-20, 21-18 win over Presley Smith and Allison Lee of the United States.
The only Indian loss of the day came with Krishna Prasad Garage and Sai Pratheek exiting the tournament in men’s doubles after losing 16-21, 21-15, 16-21 to the French duo of Christo and Toma Junior Popov.
Sindhu began the opening game against Huang in an evenly paced manner, both players exchanging serve along the way. The turnaround for the Indian came after the mid-game break, when Huang had a slim 12-11 lead. Sindhu then went on a nine-point winning streak to completely change the game and closed out the opening game 21-14.
In the second game, Sindhu opened up a small gap between the two early on and went into the mid-game interval, leading 11-6. Although Huang recovered slightly to reduce the Indian’s lead, Sindhu showcased her match-winning experience and closed out the game, winning four points on the trot and taking the match 21-14, 21-12 in 36 minutes.
Crasto and Ponnappa were thoroughly dominating through their match against their Australian opponents. In the first game, they won five consecutive points to open the gap in the scoreline to 9-4 and then steadily maintained a big-enough gap through the rest of the game to clinch it 21-14.
The second game saw Ho and Somerville fight back in the initial exchanges before Crasto and Ponnappa took charge of the play as well.
At 4-all again, the Indians won four consecutive points and briefly lost their serve before going on a massive eight-point winning streak to all but close out the match at 16-5. Crasto and Ponnappa then went on another streak of winning points to ultimately close out the game 21-8.