Badminton Asia Championships: Sindhu crashes out after losing to An Se Young in quarter-finals

Former world champion PV Sindhu crashed out of the Badminton Asia Championships 2023 after losing to world No. 2 An Se Young in her women's singles quarter-final match at the Sheikh Rashid Bin Hamdan Indoor Hall, here on Friday.

World No 11 Sindhu suffered her sixth straight defeat against the South Korean shuttler by going down 21-18, 5-21, 9-21.

Sindhu, a two-time Olympic medallist, began well and won the first game despite trailing 13-16 at one stage. The Indian had never won a game against An Se Young in their previous five meetings.

An Se Young dominated the second game. In the third, Sindhu engaged in longer rallies but An Se Young proved tough to crack and ran away with the game convincingly.

At the last edition of the Asian championships held in Manila last year, Sindhu settled for bronze after losing to Akane Yamaguchi in the semi-finals. The 27-year old Sindhu also won a bronze in 2014.

Meanwhile, India's mixed doubles team of Rohan Kapoor-N Sikki Reddy also lost to the world No. 19 duo of Dejan Ferdinansyah-Gloria Emanuelle Widjaja from Indonesia 18-21, 21-19, 15-21 in the quarter-finals.

Commonwealth Games 2022 men's doubles champions Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty will be up against third-seeded Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan of Indonesia later, for a place in the semi-finals.

In the men's singles event, world No. 9 HS Prannoy will play world No. 15 Kanta Tsuneyama of Japan.