London Olympic bronze medallist shuttler Saina Nehwal produced a fine performance to kick-off her BWF World Championships campaign with a straight game win over Hong Kong's Cheung Ngan Yi in Tokyo, Japan on Tuesday. (More Badminton News)
A former world number one, Sa🃏ina took 38🐼 minutes to dispatch Ngan Yi 21-19 21-9 in the opening round.
The 32-year-old Indian, who has a silver and bronze from the Worlds, thus moved into the pre-quar🍃terfinals as h♒er second-round opponent, Nozomi Okuhara pulled out of the tournament due to an injury, giving the Indian a bye.
The wom𝓡en's doubles pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand also made ౠa winning start.
The Indian 💝duo hardly broke a sweat as it inflicted a 21-11 21-13 defeat𝐆 on Malaysians Yeen Yuan Low and Valeree Siow.
Young women's pai൲ring of Ashwini Bhat K and Shikha Gautam also progressed to the second round after beating the Italian duo of Martin🔯a Corsini and Judith Mair 21-8 21-14 in 30 minutes.
Saina had showed signed of regaining her form during her stunniꦡng win over He Bingjiao of China en route her first quarterfinal appea🀅rance in 16 months at Singapore Open in July.
The Hyderabad shuttler dished out another gritt🦹y show on Tuesday as she recovered f꧅rom 4-7 to turn the tables at 12-11 just after the interval.
Fighting for each point, Saina kept herself in contention as she maintained a narrow one-point lead over Ngan Yi, before moving ahead with the two cru🌜ci🍷al points at 19-19 to pocket the opening game.
Saina then switched gears in th𝔉e second game even as Ngan Yi struggled. Soon, the Indian moved to a 11-6 advantage at the🎉 interval and marched ahead to eventually seal the contest without much fuss.
However, it was the end of the road for the mixed doubles pair of Venkat Gaurav Prasad and Juhi Dewangan as they went down 10-21 21-23 to🍌 Gregory Mairs and Jenny Moore of England.
Men's doubles pair of Krishna Prasa⭕d Garaga and Vishnuvardhan Goud Panjala also crashed out of the tꦛournament, losing 14-21 18-21 to France's Fabien Delrue and William Villeger.
Mixed doub🎀les duo of Tanisha Crasto and Ishaan Bhatnagar also didn't have a good outing, losing 14-21 17-21 to 14th Supak Jomkoh and Supissa🌼ra Paewsampran of Thailand.
