Unseeded Subhankar Dey saved two match points against China’s Ren Pengbo before managing to continue his unbeaten run to reach the men’s singles final in the SaarLorLux Open Super 100 badminton tournament in Saarbrucken, Germany, on Saturday.
The world number 64 Indians, who had accounted for former world and Olympic champion Lin Dan in the earlier rounds got the better of Ren 21-18, 11-21, 24-22 in a nerve wrecking contest that lasted an hour and eight minutes.
He will now take on fifth seed Rajiv Ouseph of England, who got the better of France’s Toma Junior Popov 21-8, 19-21, 21-19 in another marathon encounter.
Elsewhere, India’s challenge in the Hungarian International Challenge came to an end at the quarterfinal stage with mixed doubles top seeds Rohan Kapoor and Kuhoo Garg going down to Denmark’s Joel Eipe and Mette Poulsen 21-15, 21-17.
Poulsen then came back to defeat India’s Shikha Gautam in the women’s singles match 15-21, 21-18, 22-20 in exactly an hour.
Also ending on the losing side were former world junior runners up Siril Verma, who went down against Croatia’s Zvonimir Durkinjak 21-15, 21-11 and men’s doubles combination of Kapoor and Saurabh Sharma. The Indian pair lost to top seeds Milosz Bochat and Adam Cwalina of Poland 12-21, 21-18, 21-19.