After failing to cross the early rounds of his last 10 tournaments, Lakshya Sen finally broke through to the quarterfinals. It was a high-class performance against Li Shi Feng, last year’s French Open runner-up and Asian Games champion.

Having made his first quarterfinal since last July, Sen smiled about how deeply he had wanted this – “as much as a small kid who has his candy taken away, like a kid who wants his candy all the time”.

It was a physically intense battle, with Sen wearing Li down eventually, 15-21 21-15 21-13.

“I would say the best is yet to come, I’m hoping for more,” said Sen. “The work is still pending, a lot more to do. Having said that, a great performance and a confidence booster for me, especially after the last few months.

“I’d needed a lot more match practice and being in there, fighting, finding the solutions inside the court. I felt like I didn’t get many matches in there, in recent months. As I played good matches in the Badminton Asia Championships, three good matches, finding the solutions on court with the pressure on, that was missing in the past few months. I’m also happy with the way I trained in the last few months.

“The matches I played at the BAC, I was in great shape. I was able to do a lot of things I was working on, because it was less pressure in the matches where we had already qualified, but still I wanted to get those matches under my belt.”

China Falter in Men’s Doubles

China had some other high-profile losses on the day, with three of their men’s doubles pairs crashing out. Second seeds Liang Wei Keng/Wang Chang were stopped by Lee Jhe-Huei/Yang Po-Hsuan while eighth seeds Liu Yu Chen/Ou Xuan Yi were surprised by Supak Jomkoh/Kittinupong Kedren. They were joined on the sidelines by He Ji Ting/Ren Xiang Yu, who fell in straight games to world champions Kang Min Hyuk/Seo Seung Jae.

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