Ayush Shetty ousted fellow Indian badminton player Kidambi Srikanth to qualify for the men’s singles quarter-finals at the Taipei Open 2025 badminton tournament on Thursday.
Currently 44th in the badminton rankings, Ayush Shetty beat world No. 82 Srikanth by a 21-16, 15-21, 21-17 scoreline in just over an hour.
This was 20-year-old Ayush Shetty’s second win over his senior compatriot this year. Shetty had also bested Srikanth, a former world No. 1 and World Championships medallist, at the Indonesia Masters in January.
Srikanth was leading the first game 15-14 before Shetty turned the tables with six successive points to take the lead. The second game was also neck-to-neck with Srikanth pulling away right at the end to draw level in the match.
The decoder was, again, a thrilling affair as the scores stood deadlocked at 14-all at one point. However, this time it was Shetty who came up trumps to progress in the BWF Super 300 tournament.
Meanwhile, Unnati Hooda kept the Indian challenge alive in women’s singles after outplaying local player Lin Sih-Yun 21-12, 21-7 in just 27 minutes.
World No. 53 Unnati Hooda will face another Chinese Taipei player, the 65th-ranked Hung Yi-Ting, in the quarters.
Meanwhile, it was the end of the road for Tharun Mannepalli in men’s singles after he suffered a 21-13, 21-9 loss to Indonesian badminton player Mohammad Zaki Ubaidillah in the second round.
Mannepalli is ranked 56th in the rankings – 11 places better off than Ubaidillah.
