Led by the performances of Loh Kean Yew in a dramatic match against Lakshya Sen. Supported by the Adcocks in mixed doubles, Chirag Shetty and Hendra Setiawan in men’s doubles and Kazumasa Sakai’s easy victory in the second men’s singles, Pune 7Aces completed a hat-trick of tie wins in the season.
Pune 7Aces now have 14 points from the three ties and are placed second on the points table.
An easy win for the Adcock pairing of Chris and Gabrielle from Pune 7Aces who seemed in no trouble against Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Jessica Pugh. The defence and the fast-paced game of the Adcocks were too much for the young Chennai pairing as they raced to a 15-10 and 15-12.
Pune 7Aces raced into an 8-2 lead at in a hurry in game 1 and aided by unforced errors from the opponent won the game 15-10. The second game was more of a contest where it was a close affair till 13-12 when the Chennai pairing staged a comeback of sports from 8-5 down. Adcock’s though didn’t flinch and closed the game and match 15-12 showing their all-around dominance.
In the women’s singles encounter Chennai played their trump and World No. 30, Kirsty Gilmour didn’t disappoint as she closed the game 12-15 and 6-15 against Rituparna Das of Pune 7Aces.
Though Rituparna showed glimpses of her ability with some deaf touches and angular shots but more often than not she missed the mark by a whisker costing her the game. Chennai Superstarz after two matches led by 2-1 against Pune 7Aces.
It was a clash of the equals as World No.37 Loh Kean Yew went up against World No.32 Lakshya Sen. Loh Kean Yew finally walked away with the match with a scoreline of 15-13;10-15;15-8.
In a battle of equals, it was Loh Kean Yew’s defence against Lakshya Sen’s attack Yew lived up to his respect as the Singaporean No.1 showing his impeccable court movement and deaf touches. Sen’s power game was paying dividends in the first game as he went into the mid-game break leading 8-5. With the win at a touching distance Sen’s errors kicked in and Yew capitalised to close the game 15-13 for Pune 7Aces.
The second game was being led by Yew going into the break but Sen didn’t let go and came back all guns blazing to take the game 10-15. The last game was even more neck-to-neck as Yew went into the break leading only by a point. Yew came back on the court and put the foot on the peddle and it was no stopping the 2019 Thailand Masters winner as he smashed, dropped and picked up everything that Sen put across the net. Yew won the game 15-8.
World No.2 Hendra Setiawan and World No.10 Chirag Shetty had the onus of winning the trump for Pune 7Aces. The Chennai pairing of Sumeeth Reddy and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy looked no match for the star duo of Pune as they closed the match in straight games beating their opponents 15-12 and 15-14 and win the tie for the team.
It was a mere formality but playing in his debut season of PBL, Japanese –Kazumasa Sakai was in no mood to fool around. He went passed the young Indian competitor, Satish Kumar Karunakaran beating him 15-10 and 15-12 in straight games to win the match.
