Sydney, June 23 (IANS): Continuing his fine run, recently-crowned Indonesia Open champion Kidambi Srikanth on Friday defeated fellow Indian shuttler B. Sai Praneeth in a men’s singles quarter-final match in the $750,000 Australia Open Superseries here. Srikanth made it to the semi-finals with a 25-23, 21-17 win in a match that lasted for 43 minutes. This was his third quarter-final in the last five tournaments that he has participated in. Praneeth, who defeated Srikanth in the Singapore Open final in April, started the first game on a strong note, opening a healthy lead of 9-6 but Srikanth fought back to make it 10-10 and went into the break with a slight advantage of 11-10. The two were neck-and-neck from there but at 13-13, Praneeth took three straight points to make it 16-13. Srikanth then turned his A game right then to win five straight points to make it 18-16. Srikanth then raced to 20-17 but Praneeth clawed back to win four points on the trot to make it 21-20. From there, an intense battle started as both the Indians saved two game points each, which saw Srikanth pocketing the game 25-23. In the second game, Srikanth maintained a strong lead making it 9-6 before Praneeth managed three points in a row to equalise at 9-9. However, he could not hold the higher-ranked player as Srikanth extended his lead to 11-9 at the break. Srikanth then went on to extend his lead to 16-12 before Praneeth came from behind and made it 16-16. Towards the end, Srikanth used all his experience to comfortably win the tie 21-17. Srikanth will play the winner of the second quarter-final match between Shi Yuqi of China and Denmark’s Hans-Kristian Vittinghus. However, Indian star P.V. Sindhu was knocked out following a tough quarter-final battle with World No.1 Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei. Sindhu won the first game before Tai staged a strong comeback to register a 10-21, 22-20, 21-16 verdict in the women's singles clash which lasted for about an hour. The top seeded Tai improved her head to head record against World No.4 Sindhu to 7-3. In the opening game, Tai had no response to Sindhu's smashes as the Rio Olympics silver medallist dominated the proceedings to pocket it easily. Tai, however, made a strong comeback in the second game, taking a 4-1 lead, before Sindhu clawed her way back to 8-8. It was a neck and neck battle at that time, and Sindhu then took a 13-10 lead, before Tai won four points on the trot to take a 14-13 lead which she extended further to 18-14. Sindhu made a critical error at that stage where she allowed Tai to save the match point, and take the game into the decider with a 22-20 win.
