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Saina crashes out in last 8 at all England
Saina Nehwal once again failed to breach the Chinese wall in 2012 as the Indian ace succumbed to a straight game loss against former Asian champion Li Xuerui in the quarterfinals of the All England Super Series Premier badminton tournament in Birmingham on Friday.
Saina Nehwal once again failed to breach the Chinese wall in 2012 as the Indian ace succumbed to a straight game loss against former Asian champion Li Xuerui in the quarterfinals of the All England Super Series Premier badminton tournament in Birmingham on Friday.
The world number four, who is sandwiched between five Chinese players in the ranking list, managed to save three points and then earned her only game point of the match before hitting an overhead toss wide to end her campaign 21-13, 23-21 in 39 minutes.
Going into this last eight encounter, the Indian ace boasted of a 6-3 win-loss record in 2012 with all her reversals coming against Chinese opponents.
She had lost to Jiang Yanjiao twice - in the Korea Open quarterfinals and the Uber Cup Asian qualifiers - and world champion Yihan Wang in the Malaysia Open semifinals and Friday's encounter against inexperienced Li presented her the best opportunity to break that trend but she fell short.
