Lin Dan luckily wins round-of-16 match against Hafiz Muhammad Hashim in China Masters Super Series
Luck favoured China’s ace shuttler, Lin Dan, as he got rid of Malaysia’s Hafiz Muhammad Hashim in their Men’s Singles round-of-16 battle of the 2011 Li Ning China Masters Super Series, on Thursday, September 15, in China. The top seed won the match in three
games after working hard for 48 minutes.
The ruling Olympic and World Champion, Lin had to dig deep into his reserves to chuck out the lower ranked Malaysian shuttler. Hafiz Hashim won the first set with a big margin and was near to win the second set when Lin came from behind and beat him in scintillating
fashion.
Lin started the first game in an impressive manner and reached at 6-1 when the Malaysian veteran accelerated his speed and narrowed the gap by reaching 6-8. The Malaysian silenced the huge local crowd by scoring five points in a row to make it an 11-8 lead
until the interval.
After the break, the Chinese levelled the score at 13-13 by playing to his full abilities. At this stage, the Malaysian proved that there is still some badminton left in him as he scored the remaining points in incredible manner. Lin failed to stop the progressive
run of Hafiz Hashim and lost the set by a margin of 14-21.
The second game was close between both shuttlers as they were not committing errors in the opening half. However, after the interval, the Malaysian displayed a spectacular performance and reached at 18-14. He was quite close to win but Lin, who is known
for his fighting spirit, fought back and scored seven points in a row and won the set by a 21-18 margin.
In the final game, the top seed showed no mercy to the Malaysian and kept the pace of the rallies at the highest level. He employed all of his attacking strokes to dominate the rallies and remained successful in winning the third set with an impressive 21-9
margin. This breath-taking match ended in 48 minutes with the result of 14-21, 21-18 and 21-9.
In the Men’s Singles semi-final, Lin will be up against either Sho Sasaki or Kazushi Yamada of Japan.
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