Thailand Open men’s doubles champion Chirag Shetty played a pivotal role alongside world champion Hendra Setiawan to help Pune 7 Aces register their second successive win in the Premier Badminton League.
Shetty and Setiawan, playing the trump match for the team, defeated Bengaluru Raptors Arun George and Rian Agung Saputro 15-14, 15-3 to turn things around for the team where trailing 3-1 at that juncture.
The husband-wife combination of Chris and Gabrielle Adcock then gave the Aces the winning point with a 10-15, 15-11, 15-12 victory over Chan Peng Soon and Eom Hye Won as they sealed the tie 4-3 at the Babu Banarasi Das Indoor Stadium in Lucknow on Monday.
The Pune team had won their opening encounter against Mumbai Rockets 5-2 and are now second in the standings behind Chennai Superstarz, who have played one tie more.
Earlier, world Championships bronze medallist Sai Praneeth had notched up his first win of the season while World No. 2 Tai Tzu Ying continued her winning streak to help Bengaluru Raptors take an early lead.
Having never played Yew on the BWF World Tour, world No 11 Sai Praneeth took some time to figure out the Singaporean. Yew was coming after the high of beating 2014 Commonwealth Games champion Parupalli Kashyap in Pune’s first tie of the season.
Carrying that momentum into this match, Yew fought back from a 2-4 deficit to move ahead to 10-8 and then sealed the opening game against the former Singapore Open champion 15-10.
Change of ends, however, worked well for the Bengaluru star player. Sai Praneeth soon found his rhythm and raced to a 11-4 lead. It was then a matter of time before he wrapped up the second game 15-7. He maintained the same momentum in the decider to clinch the point with a 10-15, 15-7, 15-8 win.
The early stages of the women’s singles clash between former World No. 1 Tai Tzu Ying and Pune’s Rituparna Das turned out to be lopsided as the former Indian national champion really struggled to keep up with the Chinese Taipei shuttler. Tai was fully in control of every aspect of the game before pocketing the opener 15-3.
The scene completely changed in the second game as Das relied on some exquisite placement of the shuttle to put Tai in a spot of bother. Das raced to a 9-5 before Tai began flummoxing her with quality strokes. The Raptors Trump first levelled matters at 9-9 before finishing it off 15-3, 15-9 for her third win of the season.
In the day’s opening match, 22-year-old Ansal Yadav gave a good account of himself on his PBL debut against World No. 71 Kazumasa Sakai of the Aces but ended on the wrong side of the 15-14, 15-9 result.
