India’s Subhankar Dey shocked multiple time World and Olympic champion Lin Dan 22-20, 21-19 to enter the quarter-finals of the SaarLorLux Open Badminton Championship in Saarbucken, Germany Thursday.
World No 64 Subhankar took 45 minutes to upstage the current world No 12, who has five World Championship titles and two Olympic gold medals in his kitty.
In a tightly fought first game, the Indian saved three game points at 17-20. He won five straight points at the business end of a topsy-turvy opener to draw first blood 22-20.
The second game was a different story with Dey running into a 12-7 lead before Dan started a fightback. From 9-14 down, the Chinese legend won five straight points to level the game 14-14.
It was then Dey’s turn to have match points, three out of four of which were saved by Lin Dan. But Dey won a crucial point that mattered to win in straight games.
This was the first meeting at the BWF tour between Dey and Lin Dan.
Lin Dan, at 35, is at the business end of his career but was still the top seed at the event.
About two weeks ago, it was Kidambi Srikanth, who beat Lin Dan at the Denmark Open.
The other notable performance on Thursday came from CWG gold medallist Parupalli Kashyap, who beat local player Alexander Roovers 21-14 21-12.
In the quarter-finals, Subhankar will be pitted against seventh seed Toby Penty of England while seventh seed Kashyap will face Frenchman Toma Junior Popov.
Other Indians, however, had a disappointing day in doubles with Arun George and Sanyam Shukla losing to Mark Lamsfuss and Marvin Emil Seidil 19-21 16-21.
Huang Kaixiang and Wang Zekang beat MR Arjun and Shlok Ramachandran 21-16 21-18 in another match.
In Macau Open, lone-standing Indian Rituparna Das lost to fifth seed Hue Yan from China 21-8 15-21 21-7 in a 41 minute encounter.