India’s Parupalli Kashyap played one of the longest matches of his career as he roared into the prequarterfinals with a gruelling three-game win over Chinese Taipei’s Jen Hao Hsu at the USD 200,000 Badminton Asia Championship on Wednesday.
In a men’s singles contest that lasted for more than an-hour-and-a-half, Kashyap played out of his skin as he fought back to see off Hsu 15-21 21-18 21-19 at the Wuhan Sports Center Gymnasium.
Commonwealth Games champion, Kashyap will next take on seventh seed Chinese Zhengming Wang, who beat Thailand’s Boonsak Ponsana 21-10 21-12 in another match. The Indian has lost to Wang thrice, while defeated him once at the 2014 India Super Series.
Two-time bronze medallist at the World Championship, P V Sindhu, too, made a positive start to her Badminton Asia Championship campaign after missing in action due to an injury.
She took just 16 minutes to dispose off Uzbekistan’s Anait Khurshudyan 21-6 21-5 in a women’s singles match here. The Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Sindhu, seeded eighth, will next meet Macao’s U Teng Iok.
Indian men’s doubles pair of Akshay Dewalkar and Pranaav Jerry Chopra failed to cross the second round hurdle as they lost 15-21 17-21 to fourth seeds Hiroyuki Endo and Kenichi Hayakawa of Japan. Another men’s doubles combination of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy, meanwhile, got a walk over to enter the third round.