India’s ace badminton star Saina Nehwal was crowned champion of the Indonesia Masters in Jakarta after her opponent Carolina Marin was retired hurt.
On winning, Nehwal took to Instagram and posted on how she gives credits to her husband for motivating her. She wrote, “Would like to thank Parupalli Kashyap for getting me back to some winning ways and working really hard with me for the last 5 months to improve my game. Being very sick with fever the entire tournament #indonesiamasterssuper500 he still managed to come and help me .. would also like to thank @mohammed.siyadath.ullah for being there n supporting me throughout the tournament also special thank u to @arvind_sportsphysio for keeping my body stable in the tournament. Finally a big thank you to Gopi sir too who’s always there behind the scenes”.
The winner displayed a performance in the year of 2018, winning gold at the Commonwealth Games, a bronze at the Asian Games and had reached the summit clash of Denmark open, Syed Modi International and Indonesia Masters in 2018.
Marin – three-time World Champion and reigning Olympic champion – entered the finals after defeating PV Sindhu in the quarters and China’s Chen Yufei in the semifinal. Saina had defeated China’s He Bingjiao 18-21, 21-12, 21-18 to book the finals berth.
She, however, said she was not happy with the win. She said, “But I am not happy with the way I got it today. Of course, I am happy that I could reach the finals, beating difficult opponents like He Bingjiao. Both the tournaments, I am very happy with my performance. It is great to beat (Nozomi) Okuhara, Binjiao, Dinar (Dyah Ayustine).
“In the finals, of course, Carolina had the upper hand and I wanted to fight and see how the match goes but it was unfortunate what happened,” she added.
