India Open: PV Sindhu thrashes Ratchanok Intanon to reach final

PV Sindhu stormed in the final of the India Open on Saturday after beating Thailand's Ratchanok Intanon in straight games at the Siri Fort Sports Complex in New Delhi.

Having beaten Carolina Marin in the final last year, Sindhu is now looking to retain the title at home turf.

Sindhu completely outplayed the Denmark Open winner 21-13, 21-15 and will now face USA's Beiwen Zhang in the final on Sunday.

Sindhu dominated the match right from the start, finding some delightful angles to leave the Thai stumped.

There was a lot of drift at the court today but it hardly troubled the lanky Indian as she found the lines pretty well.

While Sindhu was at the top of the game, Ratchanok made too many unforced errors that hardly gave her a chance against the crowd-favourite.

For a time like 10 in the night, a sizeable crowd stayed back in the stadium to witness their homegrown star. Every point, every move from Sindhu was cheered to the hilt; and they did not go home disappointed.

Sindhu combined her flat shots, steeps smashes with some beautiful drop shots every now and then to take the Malaysia Masters winner by surprise.

Ratchanok fought back with some sparkling retrievals and brilliant net shots but Sindhu wrapped up the first game in just 21 minutes.

The second game saw the rallies get longer as expected and Ratchanok perhaps got a better feel of the court.

With Sindhu leading 8-6, a 34-shot rally insued, which ended with Sindhu smashing hard to win the point. Both players tested each other both at the net and the backcourt and eventually it took Sindhu three straight and hard smashes to break Ratchanok's defence.

Just a few shots later, Sindhu went into the break with an 11-8 lead.

However, Ratchanok played some sharp angles and kept the game neck-and-neck thereafter.

Unforced errors have forever brought Ratchanok's doom and in Delhi it was no different; combined with some extremely smart play from Sindhu, Ratchanok was never really in contention.

It finally took just a good judgment from Sindhu to reach another final.