Asia Badminton Championship: Kashyap, Sindhu advance

India's Parupalli Kashyap played one of the longest matches of his career as he roared into the prequarterfinals with a gruelling three-game win over Chinese Taipei's Jen Hao Hsu at the USD 200,000 Badminton Asia Championship in Wuhan on Wednesday.

In a men's singles contest that lasted for more than an-hour-and-a-half, Kashyap played out of his skin as he fought back to see off Hsu 15-21, 21-18, 21-19 at the Wuhan Sports Center Gymnasium.

The Commonwealth Games champion, Kashyap will next take on seventh seed Chinese Zhengming Wang, who beat Thailand's Boonsak Ponsana 21-10, 21-12 in another match.

The Indian has lost to Wang thrice, while defeated him once at the 2014 India Super Series.

"It was a tough match, quite long. But I am happy with my performance. He had beaten me once during ABC last year. Even in India Open it was a tight match," Kashyap said.

"There was also some electricity problem when I was serving at 20-19. We were like stranded for 10 to 15 minutes on the court. Once lights were on, I served and after sometime he lifted it out. It was overall a good match. I hope I can recover well for tomorrow," he added.

Two-time bronze medallist at the World Championship, P V Sindhu, too, made a positive start after missing in action due to an injury. She took just 16 minutes to dispose off Uzbekistan's Anait Khurshudyan 21-6, 21-5 in a women's singles match.

The Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Sindhu, seeded eighth, will next meet Macao's U Teng Iok.

Indian men's doubles pair of Akshay Dewalkar and Pranaav Jerry Chopra failed to cross the second round hurdle as they lost 15-21, 17-21 to fourth seeds Hiroyuki Endo and Kenichi Hayakawa of Japan.

Another men's doubles combination of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy, meanwhile, got a walk over to enter the third round.