Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand stormed into the quarterfinals of the All England badminton championships with an impressive 21-14, 24-22 victory over Yuki Fukushima and Sayaka Hiroto of Japan in Birmingham on Thursday.
However, the men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty and last edition's men's singles finalist Lakshya Sen crashed out.
Satwik-Chirag lost 21-10, 17-21, 19-21 to Liang Wei Keng and Wang Chang of China. Lakshya found the going tough against Anders Antonsen of Denmark and lost 13-21, 15-21.
World No. 17 Treesa and Gayatri were at their aggressive best against the Japanese, who are ranked eight rungs above them. In the first game, the Indian girls raised the tempo from the 7th point and soon secured a handy 11-7 lead. Their defence was so good that they returned even from difficult angles. They maintained the tempo after the break and moved to 15-9 before winning the first game with a big margin.
The Indian duo was up 8-1 in the second and quickly made it 19-12. But a lapse in concentration saw them lose momentum. The Japanese won eight of the next nine points to draw level at 20-20, courtesy eight unforced errors by the Indians.
However, the Indian girls came up with an excellent crosscourt drop at 22-22. Treesa followed it with a stunning half smash to surprise the Japanese. "It was a rollercoaster ride," said Gayatri after the hard-fought win. "We're extremely happy with our performance today, and we're looking forward to our match tomorrow. We've been improving but there's a lot more to work on."
Treesa was delighted that they could turn it around. "At 20-20, we stayed calm and focused on the next point and worked," Treesa said. In the quarterfinals, Treesa-Gayatri will face Li Wen Mei and Liu Xuan Xuan of China. This is the first time Indians will be facing the world No. 52 pair.
