Saina,Bhat out of China Super Series

Saina Nehwal’s poor run at the tail-end of the Super Series leg in the Far East continued,with a 17-21 21-8 21-13 second-round exit at the China Open against local qualifier Jingyun Xia. The weariness of the season in which she has played 16 tournaments over the last year — the third-most among the Top-10 players — was apparent in her 52-minute pre-quarters encounter against the unfancied yet dangerous Chinese,ranked 208 in the world. Xia’s lowly ranking is mostly courtesy the mere two tournaments she has played this season.

The 19-year-old Nehwal,now ranked seventh,was scalped by Xia,a national-team second-stringer from the Guangdong Province and a quarter-finalist at the Indian Open in April,after taking the early initiative and going a game up. The close skirmish of the opening game in which Nehwal came back from 15-12 down and took six points in a row to win 21-17 also meant she was flattened by the second. Nehwal didn’t manage the kill shot even once during the 29 rallies. Her net game failed to get going in the third game as Nehwal went down despite having staved off three game points.

Aravind Bhat went down 21-15 21-16 to Sony Dwi Kuncoro and Chetan Anand lost 21-19 21-9 to Pengyu Du.