Dubai: India’s PV Sindhu was drawn to face China’s eighth-ranked Chen Yufei in the women’s singles semi-finals of the BWF Dubai World Superseries Finals to be played at the Hamdan Sports Complex on Saturday.
The draw of the semi-finals for all five categories was held at the end of play at the Hamdan Sports Complex Press Conference Room later on Friday. While Sindhu will be playing the tennager from China, top-ranked Akane Yamaguchi from Japan was drawn to face fifth-ranked Ratchanok Intanon of Thailand in the second semi-final.
In the men’s singles, defending champion Viktor Axelsen will take on China’s Shi Yuqi and Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia will face top-ranked Son Wan Ho from Korea. Both pairs had met in their respective round-robin group matches held over the past three days. Interestingly, Axelsen had defeated Shi in three engrossing games, while Lee Chong Wei had ironically gone down 21-13, 20-22, 15-21 to Son Wan Ho after winning the first game easily. That lop-sided result meant that the 23-year-old Na Ka Long Angus lost out on a place in the last four.
The timings of the semi-finals were to be finalized later in the night following a meeting of the technical committee. The semi-finals will be played on Saturday in two sessions at the Hamdan Sports Complex. The first session will be from 1 0am to 3 pm, while the second one will be from 4 to 9 pm. The finals in all five categories will be played on Sunday from 1 to 8 pm.
Draw for Semi-finalis
(Women’s singles) PV Sindhu (India) vs Chen Yufei (China); Akane Yamaguchi (Japan) vs Ratchanok Intanon (Thailand)
(Women’s doubles) Shiho Tanaka/Koharu Yonemoto (Japan) vs Christinna Pedersen/Kamilla Rytter Juhl (Denmark); Yu Xiaohan/Huang Yaqiong (China) vs Yuki Fukushima/Sayaka Hirota (Japan)
(Men’s singles) Lee Chong Wei (Malaysia) vs Son Wan Ho (Korea); Shi Yuqui (China) vs Viktor Axelsen (Denmark)
(Men’s doubles) Takeshi Kamura/Keigo Sonoda (Japan) vs Marcus Fernaldi Gideon/Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo (Indonesia); Liu Cheng/Zhang Nan (China) vs Mathias Boe/Carsten Mogensen (Denmark)
(Mixed doubles) Wang Yilyu/Huang Dongping (China) vs Tang Chun Man/Tse Ying Suet (Hong Kong); Tontowi Ahmad/Liliyana Natsir (Indonesia) vs Zheng Siwei/Chen Qingchen (China)
