Bali: Indian ace shuttler PV Sindhu reached women’s single final at the BWF World Tour finals. Sindhu defeated Akane Yamaguchi of Japan 21-15, 15-21, 21-19 in a thrilling semi-final encounter here on Saturday.
The two shuttlers earlier met on 20 outings, where Sindhu emerged victorious on 12 occasions. With her semi-final win over the Japanese shuttler, Sindhu strengthened her head-to-head to 13-8. In the first game, Yamaguchi took early 4-points lead, but Sindhu quickly levelled it up and snatched a lead with her amazing drop shot. Yamaguchi wins three straight points and equalised the scores 9-9 and Sindhu went on to break with slight 11-9 lead.
Post break, neither of the shuttlers was willing to drop the point, with some casual exchange of shots Sindhu was 15-13 up. Later, Sindhu looked much in control, as she stretched it to four point lead, 19-15 and won the first game with 21-15. After the change of sides, neither of the shuttlers managed to take a healthy lead at the halfway through and the Japanese went on to breather with tiny 11-10 advantage.
After the interval, Yamaguchi was on charge and engaged Sindhu into longer rallies. She quickly took up 14-18 lead and successfully forced the game into decider. The decider was initially similar to first two games as the scores were 5-5, but Sindhu changed her pace and earned 6 straight points with the help of her magical cross court smashes, and went onto mid-game interval with 11-6 lead.
Yamaguchi later showcased a stunning comeback by taking seven of the next 11 points and successfully reduced the deficit from 6-12 to 12-15. Soon after she turned the momentum into her favour by leveling it up at 17-17 and closed down scoreboard deficit. At 18-18, Yamaguchi took the point by deceiving Sindhu with a drop shot but Sidhu quickly retaliated with across court shot, bringing scores to level 19-19. Yamaguchi gifted a match point opportunity to Sindhu after her shot hit a net, and the Indian capitalised the opportunity with her smash and wrapped up the game.
The reigning world champion will lock horns with An Seyoung of South Korea in the finals to claim the title for the second time. Sindhu won the World tour title in 2018 after defeating Nozomi Okuhara in the final. An Seyoung had 2-0 head-to-head over Sindhu. Their recent meeting was in Denmark Open 2021, where the Korean defeated Sindhu 21-11, 21-12 in straight sets.
