Sindhu crashes out of French Open

Paris : Ace Indian shuttler P V Sindhu failed to stop her recent-run of early exits after the reigning world champion crashed out in the quarterfinals of the French Open after a three-game defeat to top seed Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei here.

The fifth seeded Indian went down 16-21 26-24 17-21 to the world number one shuttler in a hard-fought match that lasted one hour 15 minutes on Friday night.

This the 10th time Sindhu had lost to Tzu Ying, who now enjoys a dominant 10-5 record over the Indian. Sindhu had last defeated the Asian Games gold medallist on the way to her maiden World Championship title in August.

The 24-year-old Indian had also got the better of Tzu Ying during 2016 Olympics before knocking out the number one women's singles player in the World Tour Finals last year.

This was also world number six, Sindhu's fourth successive early exit from a tournament since claiming the World Championship at Basel, Switzerland in August. The Indian has struggled to find form since then.

The Olympic silver medallist made a first round exit in the Korea Open last month before crashing out in the second round of the Korea Open and Denmark Open in the last two events.

Earlier, Saina's campaign in the Super 750 tournament came to an end after she went down in her quarter-final clash to South Korean teenager An Se Young. In a contest that lasted for almost 50 minutes, the 17-year-old from Korea defeated Saina 22-20, 23-21 to enter the semis of the competition.

However, there was good news for India's top-ranked men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty who continued with their imperious form and shocked Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen to enter the semi-finals.

The Indian duo, which had claimed its maiden Super 500 title at the Thailand Open in August this year, shocked the World No 8 Danish 21-13, 22-20 in a 39-minute quarter-final encounter.