Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal knocked out of the ongoing Thailand Open after losing by 23-21, 14-21, and 16-21 to Thailand’s Busanan Ongbamrunghphan in a chastening 2nd round match that lasted over an hour on Thursday. Saina won the first game but unable to continue the momentum, resulting in the win for Busanan the next two games. With this India’s challenge at Thailand Open comes to end.
Prior, the mixed doubles pair Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwin Ponnappa too bow out of the competition following a straight games loss in their second-round match. Saina, who had tested positive ahead of the start of the World Tour Super 1000 tournament along with HS Prannoy, had defeated Malaysia’s Kisona Sevaduray in straight games on Wednesday after getting clearance to take part in the event post negative covid-19 test. Prannoy on the other hand lost to Lee Zii Jia of Malaysia in his first-round tie.
PV Sindhu had already crashed out of the tournament on the very first day of the event and Parupalli Kashyap had pulled out of his match midway on Wednesday. Kidambi Srikanth who won the first round against his country fellow Sourabh Verma gave his Malaysian opponent a walkover after pulling out from the tournament because of the calf injury just before the 2nd round encounter.
