PV Sindhu’s journey in the BWF World Championship 2021 came to an end on Friday after he lost the quarter-finals to the World No 1 Tai Tzu Ying at the Carolina Marin Stadium in Huelva. With this 21-17, 21-13 loss she failed to defend her World Championship title.
The Taiwanese star has always been over-shadowing Sindhu and the latest game was also fairly one-sided. Even though Sindhu tried to pose a challenge with a mini resurgence, it was not of many benefits. Tai Tzu put a seal on Sindhu’s 5th straight defeat to her and extended her head-to-head record against Sindhu to 15-5.
Sindhu has also lost to Tai Tzu in the Tokyo Olympics earlier this year. The Taiwanese is quite an expert in reading Sindhu and in Friday’s game, she made no mistakes to allow Sindhu to crack her. The last time Sindhu had beaten her was in the 2019 World Championships.
Tai Tzu can only be tackled through specific interventions like booster shots but she made sure that Sindhu remained so busy in the game that she could not come out of the struggle. Lacking confidence in a Plan B, Sindhu almost gifted the match to her Taiwanese opponent.
PV Sindhu missed out on an opportunity to win a historic 6th medal in the women’s singles category at the World Championships. Sindhu is currently in a tie with Chinese Zhang Ning with 5 medals each. Sindhu won the crown of the World Champion for the first time in her career in Basel in 2019.
Meanwhile, Kidambi Srikanth became the third Indian to reach the semi-final in the BWF World Championships in the men’s singles category after grabbing a dominating 21-8, 21-7 win over The Netherlands’ Mark Caljouw. Lakshya Sen, on the other hand, won a thrilling three-setter in the second men’s quarter-final tie while HS Prannoy lost his quarter-final game against Kean Yew Loh of Singapore.
