LIVE World Championship Final: Carolina Marin wins first game against Saina Nehwal
Saina Nehwal is all set to face top-ranked and defending champion Carolina Marin of Spain in the World Championship final shortly. The Spaniard had defeated Saina in the All England Championship final in March earlier this year. But in head to head, Saina leads 3-1.
Saina squandered a huge lead in their last match to concede defeat but according to her coach Vimal Kumar it will not have any bearing in this final. Olympic medalist Nehwal failed to cross the barrier of quarter finals in all her previous appearances in World Championship. Here she is just a step away from massive glory.
Saina Nehwal gave the country a perfect Independence Day gift by becoming the first Indian to reach the final of the World Badminton Championships in Jakarta on Saturday.
The ace Indian shuttler defeated crowd favourite Lindaweni Fanetri from Indonesia 21-17 21-17 in the semifinals, assuring herself of at least a silver medal. The World No. 2 was expected to win against Fanetri, but the match turned out to be tight, with both women playing long rallies and working on each other's patience. In the end, though, Saina's class was too much for the Indonesian to handle.
After the match she said, "It was one of my toughest matches this week, I was playing against the crowd. Whatever points she got was due to my mistakes, due to the pressure. She was playing without any tension," said Saina. "She has been coming back strongly in her matches in this tournament and I wasn't relaxed; I was alert all along for her fightback". Regarding the final, she said that the encounter against Marin would be tricky.
Irrespective of the result in the final, the Hyderabadi's semifinal victory is no mean task, as India have been able to win only four medals in the history of the prestigious event. Legendary Prakash Padukone was the first to win a bronze in 1983. Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa clinched a bronze in women's doubles event at the 2011 edition, and PV Sindhu had won a bronze in 2013 and 2014.
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