There was a stunned silence in the Siri Fort Sports Complex as P.V. Sindhu's shot went into the net, giving World No.3 Chinese Shixian Wang the win in the opening round of women's singles at the $250,000 India Open Super Series badminton here Wednesday.
Sindhu had entered the tournament confident that her 3-0 win-record over the second seed will give her a psychological advantage. But that was not to be as the teen sensation was ousted by Shixian 15-21, 21-12, 10-21 in a marathon match which lasted an hour and nine minutes.
After trading the first two games, Sindhu was leading 3-0 but the reigning All-England champion displayed supreme skills to take an almost insurmountable 16-4 lead over the Hyderabadi.
It was only a matter of minutes before the former World No.1 reached home with Sindhu's error.
But there was good news in men's singles as Parupalli Kashyap struck prime form to cause an upset by beating Chinese sixth seed Zhengming Wang 21-12, 17-21, 21-12 in exactly an hour in the men's singles opener.
In the second round, Kashyap will take on friend and compatriot R.M.V. Gurusaidutt, who edged past Chinese Taipei's World No.25 Tien Chen Chou 17-21, 21-16, 21-17 in 58 minutes.
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World No.24 Kashyap was always the underdog going into the encounter given the fact that he had not managed to win a game against the World No.7 in their past two encounters.
"I have played him twice before and he is very good at anticipating the opponents strokes. So today I kept playing at a faster pace and took a few risks and that helped me," said Kashyap.