Saina, Srikanth, Sumeeth sink in Denmark

Odense: Top seed Saina Nehwal suffered a shock defeat against Minatsu Mitani in the second round of the $650,000 Denmark Open Superseries Premier here on Thursday.

The World No.1 was outplayed 18-21, 13-21 by the Japanese shuttler. Earlier, Kidambi Srikanth and the men’s doubles pair of Manu Attri and B. Sumeeth Reddy too suffered defeats.

World No.5 Srikanth, who held a 1-1 record against Tommy Sugiarto of Indonesia coming into the match, failed to come up with his best game and lost 15-21, 17-21 in a men’s singles match here.

The top Indian men’s doubles pair of Manu and Sumeeth, who reached the finals of Dutch Open last week, put up a brave fight before going down 19-21, 22-20, 19-21 to eight seeds Lee Sheng Mu and Tsai Chia Hsin of Chinese Taipei.

On Wednesday night, H.S. Prannoy went down fighting against Hsu Jen Hao of Chinese Taipei in the opening round. World No.16 Prannoy, who had lost to Hao at the 2011 Bulgarian International, could not exert enough pressure on his opponent and suffered a 21-23, 21-19, 15-21 loss in a men’s singles match that lasted an hour and 21 minutes.

Prannoy had dominated most part of the opening game as he led 7-3 early on and even though Hao wrested control for a brief time at 13-12, the Indian grabbed the lead immediately with a four-point burst to move to 17-13 and then held three game points at 20-17. But Prannoy squandered the lead as Hao surpassed him with four straight points to move to 21-20 and then sealed the game with two more points.

Bolstered by the first game, World No. 24 Hao came into his own in the second and led right from the start to be 15-11 at one stage. Prannoy, however, had other plans as he caught up with his rival after reeling off four points and after an intense battle managed to pocket the second game with three points straight from 18-19. In the decider, Prannoy zoomed ahead to a 4-0 lead initially but Hao clawed back at 6-6 and broke off from 13-13 to eventually seal the issue.