Badminton great Lee Chong Wei suffers quarter-final upset

Former badminton world number one Lee Chong Wei followed great rival LinDan out of the China Open yesterday as he too was on the end of anupset.The 35-year-old Malaysian Lee, whose world ranking has fallen to sevenas he approaches the latter stages of his career, went down in thequarter-finals to Hong Kong’s Angus Ng Ka-long in a 70-minute thriller.The unseeded Ng defeated seventh-seeded Lee 21-12, 15-21, 21-19 to surge into Saturday’s semi-finals in Fuzhou.It is the first time in six attempts that Ng has beaten Lee.Ng, ninth in the world, will play world number one and top seed ViktorAxelsen after the formidable Dane beat Taiwan’s Chou Tien-chen 21-17,21-14.Lee’s exit, coupled with the shock first-round defeat of Chinese starLin earlier in the week, is more evidence that the careers of two ofbadminton’s all-time greats are reaching their end.In the other semi-final, South Korea’s number two seed Son Wan-Ho will play China’s reigning Olympic champion Chen Long.Sindhu crashes outIn the women’s draw, Ratchanok Intanon of Thailand plays Japan’s AkaneYamaguchi and Carolina Marin of Spain faces the Chinese qualifier GaoFangjie.Gao, 19, reached the semi-finals by springing a major shock over India’snumber two seed PV Sindhu, the China Open holder, 21-11, 21-10. The second seed Hyderabadi shuttler was outplayed by Gao in a one-sided affair which lasted 37 minutes.Right from the start, Sindhu never looked in the contention. She struggled against the Chinese shuttler and bowed out tamely.Sindhu had entered the quarter-finals stage by beating Han Yue of China 21-15, 21-13 on Thursday.