New Delhi: While it was another disheartening performance from the Indians in the Badminton Asia Championships on Friday, the country's best bet Saina Nehwal kept herself alive with a convincing display.
The Indian badminton's poster girl scored a brilliant 21-5, 21-13 victory over seventh-seeded Malaysian Mew Choo Wong and surprised even herself with her performance.
"I am speechless. It was a wonderful game. I gave my 100 per cent. She was in a great form in the last three-four tournaments. She recently beat me in the Malyasian Super Series. But the way I played today, especially in the first game, 21-5, I surprised myself," said Saina, the lone Indian survivor in the event.
"Today 80 per cent of my game was of drops and my defense was also good. She was coming up with down the line smashes. I was driving them back and keeping it cross."
Saina's next opponent is an unseeded Chinese girl Xuerui Li but the 20-year-old Indian is used to taking on the Chinese firepower.
"I have not played her before, but all the Chinese are of same level whether seeded or unseeded. But I have beaten some top Chinese players recently, so I am not nervous. I know there are a lot of expectations from me. I will try to live up to them."
Saina said her decision to play in select tournaments has helped her immensely.
"The move to play in select tournaments and focus more on training has really helped me. It has helped me to improve my strokes so much. Also, this helped me to catch up with top players. Even in All England Open I was able to match with the best.
"The fitness levels tend to go down when you play too many tournaments. I think I will continue with this programme."
Saina, however, said the performance of Indian players, barring a few, has not been up to the mark.
"This is not the best performance from the Indian team. Aditi's (Mutatkar) performance has been good in this tournament and also of Jwala (Gutta) and (Valiyaveetil) Diju. But it's just the handful of us who are performing well," she said.
"There are other players who can play well but haven't lived up to their potential. The Commonwealth Games are still five months away and there are a lot of tournaments coming up, so hopefully they will catch up."
The top seeded mixed doubles pair of Gutta and Diju went down to Chinese pair Zhan Qiu and Qing Tian in a three-game thriller.
"Diju got a stiff back in the second game. He told me that after the match. There should be better communication between us," Jwala said.
"The way we played the first game, I was superbly confident of wining it," Jwala said.
"We were not intelligent the way we played. We knew we were slow and tried to push the pace. Though we were able to stay in the rallies, we were not able to score the points."
"I am disappointed because we really worked hard for this tournament."
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