PBL: Mumbai aim to continue winning streak

Ahmedabad: Mumbai Rockets will hope to continue their winning streak when they take on Chennai Smashers in a blockbuster Premier Badminton League (PBL) tie here on Saturday.

With both the teams coming on the back of two consecutive wins, this face-off will end the winning streak of one.

The two-time runners-up Rockets are second-placed on the leaderboard, with 9 wins and 7 losses which have got them 14 points.

The presence of the BWF World Tour semi-finalist Sameer Verma in the squad has indeed worked wonders for them. The 24-year-old has simply picked up from where he left in Guangzhou and has won all three of his matches so far this season.

World No. 18 Anders Antonsen has bolstered the men's singles department as the No. 2 player in the team. His upset of the World No. 5 Son Wan Ho in Mumbai's last match gives a testament of his maturity and presence of mind.

Mumbai have also been able to bank on their strong doubles line-up that has Mumbai's icon player, Lee Yong Dae, one of the legends of badminton, with a staggering 43 Superseries titles to his name. His partnership with Kim Gi Jung took some time to take shape but now they are in full flight, as validated by their winning outing against the Awadhe Warriors in their previous encounter.

"The players are confident and motivated and our aim is to secure our position and gather as many points as possible, said the Word Ranked.

Pia Bernadeth is another veteran of the game, both on the international circuit as well as the league. She played a pivotal role to take the Hyderabad Hunters to the title last season and would bring her expertise in this match too.

However, Mumbai needs to be wary of how confident the Season 2 champions are feeling right now. Chennai has shown tremendous resilience to bounce back after a poor start through both their singles and doubles. Former World No. 2 Sung Ji Hyun has upset the likes of P.V. Sindhu and Carolina Marin and would be the favourite in this clash, more due to the fact that Mumbai doesn't have any top-20 player in women's singles.

In the second match of the double-header, seventh-placed Bengaluru Raptors will lock horns with the eighth-placed North Eastern Warriors. Since their loss in their opener, the Raptors have staged a fabulous comeback to win their next two ties while the North Eastern Warriors were blanked 0-5 by the Hyderabad Hunters in their most recent outing.

Saina Nehwal did play for the first time this season, having recovered from a shin injury but it could not benefit the Warriors as PV Sindhu won that thrilling match.

While Nehwal would be determined to make a statement against Bengaluru's Thi Vu Trang after that defeat, she needs her men's singles exponents -- Tian Houwei and Tanongsak Saensomboonsuk -- to click. Both of them had to bite the dust against the Hunters and the task would be uphill against Bengaluru's former World No.1 Kidambi Srikanth and Sai Praneeth.

Bengaluru have also been riding high on the success of their men's doubles duo of Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan, who are former world champions. IANS

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