Jiang Yanjiao’s injury helps Wang Shixian grab Women’s Singles title: China Masters Super Series
A knee injury ruined hopes of Jiang Yanjiao to win the home title as she retired hurt from the Women’s Singles final against her higher ranked team-mate, Wang Shixian at the 2011 China Masters Super Series, in Changzhou, China, on Sunday, September 18.
World Number Four, Jiang Yanjiao played tremendous badminton in the whole event and also defeated country-mate and World Number One, Wang Yihan, who was the top seed in the Women’s Singles draw of the China Masters. However, her impressive run was dented
when she got a knee injury during the second set of the final match against Shixian, who won the opening set.
The first game of this final match was thrilling, as both team-mates put up a terrific show of quality badminton and remained toe-to-toe in the first-half. They employed all their skills to occupy the driving seat, but nobody could manage to put pressure
on each other. The cheering home crowd was witnessing a stunning game from the tremendous play of both ladies.
Yanjiao was coping with the pace of the game and was not letting her challenger to dominate the pace of the rallies. She was ahead at 11-10 when the chair referee announced the one-minute break in the opening game.
After the break, the fourth seed Yanjiao remained ahead by reaching 14-13, when the higher ranked Chinese accelerated his speed and controlled the pace of the game. Yanjiao slowed down her speed as she was feeling pain in her left knee. Shixian dominated
the rallies by maintaining high speed in the rallies and clinched the first set with the difference of 21-16.
In the second set of the title-match, Yanjiao was clearly lacking the speed as she was leaning forward to pick the bird and was also slower in the rear-court area. Shixian reached at 8-5 when Yanjiao indicated that she cannot continue playing as her knee
pain was getting intense.
Consequently, the second seed Shixian emerged as the winner with a 21-16 and 8-5 margin in the 30-minute title-match fight.
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