China Open: Prannoy exits in Round of 16, India's campaign in men's singles ends

Changzhou (China), July 24 (IANS) India's campaign in the men's singles section of the BWF China Open came to a screeching end with H.S. Prannoy slumping to defeat against sixth seed Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei in a Round-of-16 clash at the Olympic Sports Centre Gymnasium here on Thursday.

Prannoy, who was the lone Indian in the fray in this top-tier event on the BWF World Series, went down to the 35-year-old World No. 9 player in hard-fought three games, going down 21-18, 15-21, 8-21 in the clash played out on Court 2 that lasted 65 minutes.

The 33-year-old Prannoy established an early lead in the first game as he opened up a 6-2 lead, and though the Chinese Taipei shuttler had levelled scores at 9-9, the Indian star kept his nose ahead to eventually quell another fightback from his opponent (19-18) to win the game 21-18.

Prannoy fought back from 1-4 down in the second game and had his chances in the neck-and-neck battle 13-all before Chou won six points in a row to open up a lead and went on to win the game 21-15 and took the match into the decider. Prannoy failed to play his game in the third game and lost it tamely 8-21 to exit the tournament.

Asked to analyse the game, Prannoy said he found things tough in the second game, from where it turned against him.

"I think probably the second game was the crucial one there, and I think it was. I was probably finding it tough to kind of play in the 3rd. I was not getting the back length all of a sudden. Just felt it was too tight in the net game as well. And he was kind of pushing the 3rd, 3rd game, first half from the net. So I think, yeah, credit to him," said Prannoy after the match.

"I think he put the pressure in, but I think in the second game, probably I should have kept it a little bit tighter and could have made it a little bit longer," Prannoy added.

Earlier on the opening day, Prannoy had staged a remarkable comeback to save five match points and defeated World No. 18 Koki Watanabe of Japan 8-21, 21-16, 23-21 in the opening round, recovering from 2-11 down in the decider to pull off the comeback for the ages to wrap up a memorable win.

Asked whether his endurance had given up in the third game because of not playing enough high-level matches recently, Prannoy said that was not the case.

"Maybe, but I think today I didn't feel it was physical, probably because of the 3rd game, the way it kind of went off, I think hardly. I think we had one or 2 rallies out there. But I think, yeah, I think to kind of play against high-quality opponents like this frequently is very important," said Prannoy.

Prannoy felt there were still some takeaways for him from the China Open. "Yeah, I think I hadn't really trained much before this week. So, I think considering that, it probably was a decent performance. But really frustrated that probably I could have played a little better 3rd set today, and I think it just went out in a whisker and probably should have made it a little bit more lengthy than what really happened," said Prannoy in the post-match interaction.

--IANS

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