BWF World Tour Finals: Into the knockout stage she marches

The reigning world champion PV Sindhu won her second group ‘A’ against Germany’s Yvonne Li and progressed to the knockout stage.

The double-Olympic medalist outplayed the world no.23 and closed the match 21-10, 21-13 in just 31 minutes. PV Sindhu is the only Indian to win this prestigious event back in 2018.

The last of Sindhu’s group stage matches is against Thailand's world no.10 Pornpowee Chochuwong. Chochuwong is the other player to progress to the knockout stage along with Sindhu from Group A.

Former world no.1 Kidambi Srikanth, who had won his first match against France’s Toma Popov fell against Kunlavut Vitidsarn 21-18, 21-07 in his second Group B match.

Srikanth’s third and final group stage match is against world no.8 Lee Zii Jia. The All England Open champion is the only player to have qualified to the knockout stage in group B.

Men’s singles group B second spot is open for both Srikanth and Vitidsarn as both of whom have won 1 match each. The Thai plays Toma Popov in his final match.

It would be interesting to see who will qualify if both Srikanth and Vitidsarn win their respective matches on Friday.

In other men’s singles matches, World no.1 Viktor Axelsen and World no.21 Lakshya Sen have progressed through to the knockout stages without playing a match as world no.2 Kento Momota and world no.10 Rasmus Gemke withdrew from the tournament due to injury.

This is Lakshya Sen’s first BWF World Tour Finals.

Indian men’s and women’s doubles pairs, Satwik-Chirag and Ashwini-Sikki Reddy lost both of their group stage matches and crashed out of the World Tour Finals.

All the final group stage matches are live on Friday, December 03rd, 2021.