Indian shuttler Ajay Jayaram on Thursday made it to the quarter-finals of the Chinese Taipei BWF World Tour Super 300 tournament after inflicting a straight-game defeat in the second round on Denmark’s Kim Bruun in Taipei City.
A former world number 13 Indian, Jayaram prevailed over Bruun in a 37-minute battle and came up victorious 21-10, 22-20. Jayaram got off to a superb start in the match as he raced to 6-0 lead at one point of time. But Kim clawed his way back into the contest and brought the scoreline to 8-9 before Jayaram edged ahead, leading 14-8 and then went on to 20-9 which helped him pocket the first game.
If the first match was completely dominated by the Indian, the second match was a closely-contested one. The Danish shuttler removed a 3-6 deficit and soon took the lead himself at 11-9 at the break. Kim continued to fight and extend his lead at 16-12 but it was the experience of Jayaram that mattered on the day as he erased the deficit to 19-19 and then held on to win the second match as well.
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Jayaram would next go up against Lee Zii Jia of Malayasia.
But former national champion Sourabh Verma’s stay at the tournament didn’t last long as he was defeated by Japan’s Riichi Takeshita 21-19 21-23 16-21 to crash out of the competition. Verma had earlier won the $75,000 Russian Open title in July and after recovering from an injury, the shuttler had also made it to the Indian squad for the 18th Asian Games in Indonesia.
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