Saina Nehwal outplayed Sabrina Jaquet of Switzerland 21-9, 21-4 for a bright start for the league competition in her group in women’s badminton at the Wembley Arena on Sunday.
In a match that lasted just 24 minutes, Saina was fluent and stepped up her game to collect a clutch of points midway through both the games to outplay the Swiss.
Sabrina, who had qualified for the Games by reaching the quarterfinals of the 2012 European Championship in Karlskrona, Sweden, could not provide any resistance to Saina.
The 22-year-old Indian took 12 minutes to wrap up the first game, before sealing the issue in her favour by winning the second game in just 10 minutes.
Such was the domination of the Indian that Sabrina was reduced to a bystander as the Indian kept lapping up her points in quick succession.
Her next match will be against Lianne Tan on Monday.
In mixed doubles, however, Gutta Jwala and V. Diju lost their second successive match in the league, 12-21, 16-21 against Thomas Laybourn and Kamilla Rytter Juhl.
There was the possibility of a fight in the second game when the Indian pair recovered from being down 9-13 to inch towards parity at 15-16, but felt that its good work was undone by a bad call by the chair umpire.
“The mistake was at a critical point. The call was a fault but it was not a fault. If we had got that point, it would have been different,’’ said Diju.
Jwala was more upset despite the request from her partner to “be calm, and be ready for the next point.’’
As it turned out, Diju and Jwala won only more point as the Danes reeled off the last four to wind up the show.
The Indian pair will meet the Koreans Lee Young Dae and Ha Jung Eun in the last league match on Monday.
“We win against them all the time. But, it is still going to be tough competition.’’ Diju said.
The third-seeded Tontowi Ahmad and Lilyana Natsir of Indonesia had cruised into the quarterfinals from the group with two wins.
