France (Paris): Chinese shuttler He Bing Jiao started the first set on a strong note taking a lead of 7-2 initially. She was lethal with her deceptive drops which were difficult for Sindhu to return. Also, Sindhu looked slow in her movement while Jiao was very quick in returning the shuttles. Sindhu then tried to fight back with a combination of deep returns and deceptive drops which made the Chinese player move back and forth rapidly. The trick worked in Sindhu’s favour and the scoreline was soon 12-12.
Sindhu tried to make her opponent work around the court in the first set while Jiao aimed on relentless attack with the help of bullet-speed smashes. In the end, Jiao’s power game emerged victorious and she won the first set by a close margin of 21-19.
In the second set, Sindhu failed to keep the shuttle down and provided many chances for the opponent to finish rallies with smashes. She was soon trailing by 2-5. The game was then slowly slipping away from Sindhu as she was trailing by 3-8 soon. After that, Jiao was all over the place and she didn’t miss any chance to finish rallies with killer smashes. In the end, Jiao pocketed the second set by 21-14.
When Sindhu focused on the netplay in the first set, it was a close battle between the two in the first set. However, the Indian shuttler failed to rely on flat returns and instead provided overhead tosses to the opponent. It played in Jiao’s favour and the lack of flat returns turned out to be too costly for the Indian badminton star. Sindhu showed glimpses of excellence in between but she failed to topple her opponent in the end and lost the fixture in two straight sets.
