Only Chan Peng Soon-Goh Liu Ying remained on course in the Daihatsu Indonesian Masters after reaching the semi-finals on a day when Goh Soon Huat-Shevon Lai Jemie fell in the quarter-finals on Friday.
The sixth seeded Peng Soon-Liu Ying marched into the last four with a straight games 21-11, 22-20 victory over England’s Marcus Ellis-Lauren Smith in a 39-minute encounter.
Soon Huat-Shevon lost their first game 13-21 but staged a great fight in the second. They failed to press home the advantage to force a rubber and went down fighting 20-22 against China’s top seeds Zheng Siwei-Huang Yaqiong.
Peng Soon-Liu Ying set themselves an interesting clash against Indonesia’s Tontowi Ahmad-Liliyana Natsir in the semi-finals. It will be a repeat of the 2016 Rio Olympics mixed double final which the Indonesians won.
Interestingly, Liliyana is playing in her last international tournament before hanging up the racquet after more than more two decades of competitive badminton and 17 years with the Indonesian national team.
Tontowi-Liliyana defeated Japan’s Takuro Hoki-Wakana Nagahara 21-16, 21-14 in 34 minutes to advance to the last four.
Zheng Siwei-Huang Yaqiong, the current world champions will face All England champions Yuta Watanabe-Arisa Higashino in the semi-finals.
Meanwhile, Malaysia’s challenge in the men’s singles fizzled out with the defeat of Lee Zii Jia. The 20-year-old Malaysian went down tamely 13-21, 13-21 to Denmark’s Anders Antonsen in 35 minutes.
This is the third successive tournament Zii Jia has not gone beyond the quarter-finals. In the Thailand Masters he lost Frenchman Brice Leverdez while in the Malaysia Masters who was beaten by Denmark’s Viktor Axelsen. RIZAL ABDULLAHÂ
