India Culture, Business, Sports and Food. Get all the buzz in India now

Saina Nehwal India’s Saina Nehwal, the quarter finalist of Beijing Olympic Games. Became the first ever Indian woman shuttler to win two Grand Prix singles titles when she won the final of the Chinese Taipei Grand Prix Gold badminton championship in Taiwan on Sunday. She defeated her Malaysian opponent Li Ya Lydia Cheah with the margin of 21-8, 21-19. She had shot to lime light after winning the Philippines Open in 2005. After that she could not do well but her performance in the Beijing Olympic Games had increased her confidence level a lot. She had missed an Olympic medal with a very narrow margin as she had lost to Indonesia’s Maria Kristin Yulianti in the quarter final. She is also a two time national champion.

Summary This second-seeded Indian and world ranked 14 played a very attacking game from the start and did not gave any chance to her opponent to reduce the points’ gap. Though in the second set her Malaysian opponent gave a tough fight to her but she could not match the experience of the Indian. Saina said ,”I guess this is perhaps my best performance so far.” She had reached the finals and semi-finals of various tournaments but had not succeeded to win a final. This victory is vary important for her as many top ranked shuttlers had participated in the tournament.

Tournament In this tournament she defeated Mingtian Fu of Singapore, Kwan Yi Monng of Hong Kong, Porntip Buranaprasertsuk of Thailand and Pia Zebadiah Bernadet of Indonesian to reach the final. After the pull out decision of top seed Xu Huaiwen of Germany she had become the hot favorite to win the tournament.

She had an opportunity to avenge her Olympic defeat to the third seeded Indonesian Maria Yulianti but the encounter could not materialize as Maria was defeated by Pia Zebadian Bernadet in the quarterfinal. Her quarter final encounter with Porntip Buranaprasertsuk was one of the longest and toughest matches of all of the matches played in the tournament. She won all the three sets of the match with a very narrow difference. She had showed maturity as well as full control in the decisive moments of all the sets and it had turned the match in her favor. Saina had defeated Porntip Buranaprasertsuk by 20-22, 21-12, 23-21.