Olympic champion Carolina Marin completed a demolition job in her badminton world championship quarter-final match against Saina Nehwal, beating the Indian 21-6, 21-11 in just 31 minutes on Friday in Nanjing, China.
The exit of world No 1 and title favourite Tai Tzu Ying in the match before Marin vs Nehwal seemed to have provided an extra spring in the step of the Spaniard as she dominated the 2012 Olympics bronze medallist completely.
Marin, who plays an aggressive and physical brand of badminton, was an imposing presence on court, shrieking after every point she won and ensuring Nehwal knows who is on top. It was the kind of form she displayed two years ago when she won the Olympic title in Rio de Janeiro. She will need it again on Saturday when she takes on He Bingjiao, who delighted the home crowd by beating Tai Tzu in three games.
Nehwal was never in the match ever since the first rally and she will want to forget this match as soon as possible. It was a disappointing display from the Indian considering how she dominated former world champion Ratchanok Intanon in the third round on Thursday.
After Nehwal lost the first game 6-21, India’s chief national coach Pullela Gopichand was heard telling her to hit the shuttle towards the back court or at the centre and not allow Marin to dominate the net with her tosses. His advice had helped Nehwal against Intanon at 19-19 in the second game on Thursday, when the Thai threatened to take the match into a decider.
However, Marin was a different animal on Friday and even though Nehwal tried to heed to Gopichand’s advice, the Spaniard’s physicality allowed her to negate any strategy by the Indian to claw back. Nehwal did manage to fight back from 3-9 down in the second game to 8-10 but it only delayed the inevitable. Marin stepped it up after the interval and crossed the finish line after only 31 minutes of play.
Earlier in the day, Indian mixed doubles pair Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa were knocked out in the quarter-finals by top seeds Zheng Siwei and Huang Yaqiong 17-21, 10-21.
PV Sindhu and B Sai Praneeth will play their quarter-final matches against Nozomi Okuhara and Kento Momota later in the day.
