Kidambi Srikanth battles past Li Shi Feng in the next round of the ongoing BWF World Championships on Tuesday in Huelva.
Playing on court 2 former world number one Indian defeated Chinese shuttler by 15-21, 21-18, 21-17 in a thrilling contest that lasted for 70 minutes.
The seeded 12th Indian was stunned in the first game as Feng took the game by 21-15. The world No. 63 Chinese shuttler continued his momentum in the second game as Srikanth was down 9-6 at one point. But Indian recovered quickly as he won 10 straight points and pocketed the game 21-18.
The decider also went to the wire as Srikanth found another gear and went from trailing by two points in the mid-game interval to lead 15-13. Li tried to block Srikanth, but the Indian held his nerves to win the game 21-17.
Earlier in the day, reigning world champion PV Sindhu started the defence of her title with straight games victory over Martina Repiska. Two-time Olympic medallist Indian defeated shuttler from Slovakia by 21-7, 21-9 in just 24 minutes.
In men's singles, Lakshya Sen had to battle past Kenta Nishimoto to move into the next round. The Indian who is making his debut at World Championships defeated the 15th seed shuttler from Japan by 22-20, 15-21, 21- 18 in a titanic clash which lasted for one hour and 22 minutes.
( With inputs from ANI )
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