Birmingham: Malaysia’s Chan Peng Soon/Goh Liu Ying had to fight tooth and nail against Thom Gicquel/Delphine Delrue of France, surviving a nerve-jangling third set match in an epic quarter-final encounter at the All England Friday.
Chan/Goh had no answer to Gicquel’s thundering smash and Delrue’s defense and quickness in the first game, going down to the French pair 17-21 in just 17 minutes.
The Malaysian No. 3 seeds tried to cut down their mistakes and with Chan was attacking more in the second set, they managed to force a decider by winning the second game 21-18.
Chan/Goh saved some of their best badminton for the closing moments, holding their nerves to steal a victory from the French pair with the score of 22-20 in the decider. They will play Japanese Yuki Kaneko/Misaki Matsutomo on Saturday.
The mixed doubles No. 2 seeds Yuta Watanabe/Arisa Higashino of Japan will be playing No. 4 seeds Marcus Ellis/Lauren Smith of England in another semi-final.
Despite putting up a strong resistance, Malaysia’s Pearly Tan/Thinaah Muralitharan were not able to knock out No. 5 seeds Nami Matsuyama/Chiharu Shida in the quarter-finals, bowing out 12-21, 22-20, 16-21 in 60 minutes.
