Korea Open | Parupalli Kashyap beats Daren Liew to enter quarters and keep Indian hopes alive

Indian shuttler Parupalli Kashyap advanced to the Korea Open men’s singles quarterfinal after a three-game triumph over Malaysia’s Daren Liew in Incheon on Thursday. Kashyap prevailed over the Malaysian 21-17 11-21 21-12 in a contest that lasted 56 minutes. The 33-year-old is the lone Indian left in fray in the BWF World Tour Super 500 tournament after a horrendous show by the Indian contingent.

Kashyap had registered a comfortable 21-16, 21-16 win over Lu Chia Hung of Chinese Taipei in the previous round which lasted 42-minutes.

The 2014 Commonwealth Games gold-medallist will next square off against the winner of the match between eighth-seeded Indonesian Anthony Sinisuka Ginting and Denmark’s Jan O Jorgensen.

Earlier, World Championship men’s singles bronze-medallist B Sai Praneeth bowed out early from the tournament. He had lost the first game 9-21 and was trailing 7-11 in the second when he chose to retire because of injury. While World Champion PV Sindhu lost 7-21 24-22 15-21 to Beiwen Zhang of United States in her opening-round match, London Olympics bronze-medallist Saina Nehwal was trailing 21-19, 18-21 and 1-8 against South Korea’s Kim Ga Eun when she was forced to retire due to illness.

Indian men’s doubles pairs of Manu Attri-B Sumeeth Reddy and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Chirag Shetty also lost their matches on Wednesday.