Olympic bronze-medallist Saina Nehwal and young shuttler K Srikanth stormed into the finals of the women's and men's singles events respectively at the USD 700,000 China Open Super Series Premier tournament
Saina Nehwal celebrates her win over Liu Xin at the China Open in Fuzhou on Saturday
Fuzhou (China): Olympic bronze-medallist Saina Nehwal and young shuttler K Srikanth stormed into the finals of the women's and men's singles events respectively at the USD 700,000 China Open Super Series Premier tournament on Saturday.
Saina Nehwal celebrates her win over Liu Xin at the China Open in Fuzhou on Saturday. Pic/AFP
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In her sixth appearance in the prestigious tournament, Saina continued her rampaging run as she produced another good show to outclass World No 17 Liu Xin of China 21-17 21-17 in the women's semi-finals that lasted 47 minutes at the Haixia Olympic Sport Center.
The World No 5 will take on the winner of match between fifth seed Bae Yeon Ju of Korea and Akane Yamaguchi of Japan, in the summit clash today.
The last time Saina reached the finals of a Super Series tournament was at the Australian Super Series, where she defeated Spain's Carolina Marin to win the title.
The Indian had won the Syed Modi International Grand Prix gold early in the year. World No 16 Srikanth too set up a mouth-watering finale with two-time Olympic and five-time World Champion Lin Dan from China after his opponent in the semi-final, Marc Zwiebler of Germany, retired midway with the score reading 21-11, 13-7 in the Indian's favour.
Srikant's meteoric rise
The 21-year-old Indian, who won the Thailand Grand Prix Gold in 2013, finished runner up at the 2014 India Open Grand Prix Gold in Lucknow. He was a quarter-finalist in this year's Malaysian Open.
He was also a part of the Indian badminton contingent that reached the semi-finals of the mixed-team event at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
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