Indonesia Open: HS Prannoy Storms Into Quarterfinals, Sameer Verma Bows Out

One of the heroes of India's epic Thomas Cup triumph, HS Prannoy continued his rich vein of form as he stormed into the quarterfinals of the Indonesia Open Super 1000 tournament with a straight-game win over Hong Kong's Ng Ka Long Angus on Thursday. The 29-year-old from Kerala, who is desperately looking to break his five year title drought, dished out another impressive performance to outwit Ng Long 21-11 21-18 in a second round match that lasted 41 minutes.

It was Prannoy's fourth win over the 27-year-old, who is currently ranked 12th in the world.

A former top 10 player, Prannoy will next face either Denmark's Rasmus Gemke or France's Brice Leverdez.

Among other Indians in the fray, Sameer Verma ended his campaign with a 10-21 13-21 loss to world number five Lee Zii Jia of Malaysia in the second round.

This was Sameer's fifth loss to Lee in seven meetings.

Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy also bowed out of the tournament after losing 16-21 13-21 to top seeds Chen Qing Chen and Jia Yi Fan of China in women's doubles competition.

The men's doubles pairing of MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila also went down 19-21 15-21 to China's Liu Yu Chen and Ou Xuan Yi.

In the men's singles contest, it was all Prannoy in the first half of the opening game as he simply dominated the proceedings, grabbing the initiative early to lead 11-3 with a sensational cross court jump smash.

Prannoy was, however, erratic after the interval and his unforced errors allowed Ng Long to collect a few points before the Indian unleashed another cross court smash and made some sound judgements at the baseline to keep moving ahead.

Prannoy's movement was smooth as he mixed up the shots and varied the speed well and with his opponent committing errors, he had no