BWF World Tour Finals: PV Sindhu Qualifies For Knockouts; Kidambi Srikanth, Ashwini Ponnappa-Sikki Reddy Lose

India's two-time Olympic medallist PV Sindhu progressed to the knockout stage of the BWF World Tour Finals with a straight-game win over Germany's Yvonne Li in her second group A match on Thursday.

India's two-time Olympic medallist PV Sindhu progressed to the knockout stage of the BWF World Tour Finals with a straight-game win over Germany's Yvonne Li in her second group A match on Thursday. The 26-year-old Sindhu, the only Indian to win the prestigious title in 2018 and a finalist a year before, outplayed world no 23 Li 21-10 21-13 in 31 minutes. The reigning world champion will square off against top seed Pornpawee Chochuwong of Thailand next in her last group match.

World number 14 Kidambi Srikanth, who had reached the knockout stage in the 2014 edition of the year-ending event, jeopardised his chances of making it to the knockout stage after going down 18-21 7-21 to three-time junior world champion Thailand's Kunlavut Vitidsarn in his second men's singles group B match.

Earlier, the women's doubles pair of Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy suffered their second successive loss in the event, going down fighting 19-21 20-22 to Bulgaria's Gabriela Stoeva and Stefani Stoeva to bow out of contention.

The Indian duo will face England's Chloe Birch and Lauren Smith in their last Group B match.

The top men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty handed a walkover to top seeded Indonesian pair of Marcus Fernaldi Gideon and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo after the former complained of knee pain. The duo will not take further participation in the tournament.