Saina Nehwal notched her second consecutive win over PV Sindhu to enter the semi-finals of the Indonesia Masters in Jakarta on Friday. Saina will face Thailand's Ratchanok Intanon in the semi-final on Saturday. While Saina defeated Sindhu 21-13, 21-19, Intanon defeated world champion Nozomi Okuhara 21-17, 21-10.
Both the matches were one-sided contests that lasted 37 minutes. With this win, Saina improved her head-to-head record against Sindhu to 2-1. They had last met in the final of the national championships, where Saina had defeated Sindhu 21-17, 27-25. Their last match on the international circuit had come at the India Open in 2017, where Sindhu won in straight games.
Saina won the first three points of the match to take a 3-0 lead. Sindhu fought back and opened up a four-point lead at 9-5 but Saina showed her famed fighting spirit to win ten points on the trot to lead 15-9. Saina maintained a comfortable lead for the rest of the opening game, eventually winning it 21-13 in just 14 minutes.
Sindhu was dominant in the initial exchanges in the second game and led 10-5 before Saina won the next five points to draw level. Saina, who was the only unseeded woman to enter the last eight after defeating seventh seed Chen Yufei in the opening round, did well to stay within touching distance of the second-seeded Sindhu and finally overtook her in the second game at 14-13. Saina then closed out the match even as Sindhu threatened to mount a late challenge towards the dying stages of the match.
Later in the day, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty reached the men's doubles semis after beating the fourth-seeded Danish pairing of Mads Conrad-Petersen and Mads Pieler Kolding 23-21, 15-21, 21-19. The match lasted 66 minutes.