Saina Nehwal had to settle for a bronze medal at the BWF World Championships, a relegation from her silver in the previous edition in Jakarta two years ago. Such has been the scheduling by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) that the 12th-seeded Indian got less than 17 hours between her quarterfinal and the semifinal match against Japanese seventh-seeded Nozomi Okuhara. She was back on court for her semifinal at around 5.45pm (IST) the same day, which was about 16 hours and 45 minutes later. The lack of adequate rest between matches left Saina drained halfway through the second game of her three-game loss to Okuhara. While neither Saina nor Kumar blamed the scheduling for her exit, the coach felt that the fixtures were done to cater to the TV scheduling.

Source: dna August 27, 2017 12:13 UTC