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 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.
The men’s singles match between Kashyap and Hsu saw a lot of drama as the electricity went off when the Indian was leading 20-19 in the decider. Around 10 to 15 minutes time was lost in the process, but when the lights were on, Kashyap didn’t waste any time as his serve earned him the match point.
Beaten during the India Super Series, Hsu had come well prepared in the match against Kashyap. His tactics did bother the Indian, who failed to get a hold of the match early on, allowing the Chinese Taipei shuttler to open up a 7-2 lead.
Kashyap tried to get out of the rut but Hsu kept his nose ahead to earn the bragging rights after the first game.
