Sindhu in French Open QFs, Srikanth ousted

Paris, Mar 7   Ace Indian shuttler PV Sindhu stormed into the women's singles quarterfinals in the French Open Super 750 badminton tournament here on Thursday after defeating America's Beiwen Zhang in an imposing style.
Sindhu fought her way through to trounce World No.10 Zhang 13-21 21-10 21-14 after conceding the first game to enter her first quarterfinal encounter this season.
The World No.11, who is playing her first world tour since returning from a knee injury and focusing on a third medal at the Paris Olympics, will lock horns with either second seed Chen Yu Fei of China or Denmark's Line Christophersen.
Compared to a good start by Zhang, Sindhu committed far too many unforced errors to allow her rival to take an 11-7 and 14-9.
Soon the American raced past to take a 16-11 before earning eight game points. She recast her winners when Sindhu hit a flurry of shots into the net.
In the second game, Zhang took an early 3-0 lead, but Sindhu managed to bring the scores to par 4-all before going up 6-4 by capitalising on a weak return.
Soon Sindhu saw herself perched at 9-5 with the help of her sharp returns, giving an 11-7 lead at the break, leaving Zhand in disbelief.
After the change of ends, it was one-way traffic for Sindhu as she moved to 11 game points to grab the second game.
Down 2-4 in the decider, Sindhu clawed back to make it 5-5 after winning a 34-shot rally. She kept the heat by taking advantage of her rival's erratic net play to take an 8-5 lead before snatching an 11-7 advantage when Zhang miscued a shot.
After taking a four-point lead at 17-13, yet another Sindhu drop shot gave her six match points advantage and she sealed it when Zhang made another net error.
In the men's singles encounter, Kidambi Srikanth lost to Guang Zu to suffer yet another second-round defeat though he held an unblemished 5-0 record against the Chinese ahead of the match.
The former world No.1 lost 21-19 12-21 20-22 to the world No.17 Chinese in a clash that lasted for after 78 minutes.