Kidambi Srikanth advanced to the final of India Open 2019 in front a roaring home crowd at the Indira Gandhi Stadium in New Delhi on Saturday. Srikanth battled for three games to defeat China's Huang Yuxiang 16-21, 21-14, 21-19 in the semi-final to make it to the showpiece match on Sunday.

Srikanth took an hour and three minutes to get past the Chinese in what was a brilliant battle of net play between the two.

Srikanth ended the match with a delightful and deceptive drop shot after with a barrage of smashes in that rally to win the match, much to the delight of the crowd in the stadium.

Buoyed by home crowd, India's Kidambi Srikanth fuels title ambitions following fantastic semifinal fightback #HSBCBWFbadminton #HSBCRaceToGuangzhou pic.twitter.com/kbyGYP1B1z BWF (@bwfmedia) March 30, 2019

Srikanth was in a precarious situation early on when he lost the first game but came back strongly in the second game to take the match to the decider.

In the end, Yuxiang did threaten to run away when he took an 18-16 lead right towards the end but Srikanth upped the ante and worked around his attacking play well to make it 18-18.

From there, Srikanth bagged a couple of more points to bring up match points for himself.

Yuxiang saved a match point but Srikanth eventually emerged victorious.

Ahead of the tournament, Srikanth did say that he wanted to reach a final because he had played a number of quarter-finals and semi-finals last year.

"I would prefer getting out in the first round of a tournament and reach the final of the next instead of playing two quarter-finals," Srikanth had said after his first round win over Hong Kong's Wong Wing Ki Vincent.

Srikanth would be extremely happy with his effort on Saturday because Yuxiang did put him under a lot of pressure. Yuxiang had defeated Srikanth in the All England Championships last year, however, this is now Srikanth's second straight win over the Chinese.

Srikanth will next take on either former world champion Viktor Axelsen or his compatriot Parupalli Kashyap.