At 21:21 IST at the Riocentro, PV Sindhu guaranteed that she would become the fifth, having beaten Japan’s Nozomi Okuhara – ranked sixth in the world – in straight sets 21-19, 21-10 spanning 51 minutes in the semi-finals of the women’s badminton singles at the 2016 Rio Olympics. But, just as everybody thought it was easy for Sindhu, the Japanese World No.6 came back from nowhere, and with the Indian playing some wayward smashes, Okuhara drew par at 5-5 and then took a two-point lead.
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Sindhu will face world No. 1 Carolina Marin in the final on Friday for a gold medal.
For the record, Marin also entered her maiden Olympic final beating London Olympic champion Li Xuerui 21-14 21-16. “I hope I can give my best”. That’s in the next game. “Definitely I feel that I’ve a chance”, Sindhu said. “I know it will be a tough match but I want to win gold”.
Sindhu has now assured India of its second medal at the Rio Games. The immediate target was to win the next match. “All the very best for the finals”, the PM tweeted from his official handle.
What helped PV Sindhu seal her dominance in the match was to keep either pushing her opponent back to the edge of the court or force her to dash to the net. This unrelenting play gave Sindhu a 4-1 lead early, which became 8-4.
Aisuluu was clearly the superior wrestler in the totally one-sided opening round, displaying impressive strength and technique to take five points and open up a formidable lead. She won the second game 21-11.
While news of Malik’s victory broken in the predawn hours of Thursday, Sindhu’s news came in the evening, setting off a flood of messages on Twitter. She never looked back in her career and kept on rising her game. Sindhu won the first match in 2012 at the Badminton Youth Asia under-19 championships but Okuhara has clinched the last three, including one earlier this year in Sindhu’s hometown Hyderabad at the Badminton Asia Team championships.
Afterwards it was a neck-and-neck contest.
But Sakshi – who has previously shown a knack of staging strong comebacks – was a totally transformed grappler in the second round, taking eight consecutive points to send the sizable number of Indian fans in the stands into wild delirium. At the interval, Sindhu had a slender 11-10 lead. At the break of second set she was 11 and Japan’s Okuhara was 10 and at the end of the game She secured 21 and still Okuhara was 10.
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In both the three-minute periods, Babita got a leg hold on her rival but the Greek somehow managed to extricate out of the hard situation and turn the tables on the Indian grappler. But, that is one aspect of my game that I have to work on before the final.
