India’s Saina Nehwal kept her Dubai World Superseries Finals dream alive with an extraordinary win over reigning world champion Carolina Marin.

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The 23-21, 9-21, 21-12 triumph at the Hamdan Sports Complex will go down as the greatest in her career to date.

Nehwal lost her opening group match heavily yesterday and had not trained for three weeks following a recurrence of her Achilles injury.

Marin was playing well in the first two games of the match but in the third some uncharacteristic errors left the door open for Nehwal to take advantage, which she did with aplomb.

Nehwal’s focus is now on healing her troublesome Achilles and ensuring that she does not have a similar lapse in concentration to Marin when she takes on out-of-form defending champion Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei. Should the Indian come through that game as expected, she could reach Saturday’s semi-finals.

Marin must now win her last group match against unbeaten Nozomi Okuhara as a minimum requirement to progress. If she does win it could leave three players with two wins, and cause a countback of games won and lost.

Elsewhere, former world No 1 Wang Yihan qualified for the semis after coming back from a game and 16-17 down to beat Ratchanok Intanon in an epic tussle between two former world champions.

Wang’s compatriot Chen Long qualified for the men’s singles semi-finals after confidently beating Hong Kong’s Hu Yun 21-17, 21-12.

The surprises continued into the doubles arena where women’s doubles world champions, Tian Qing and Zhao Yunlei, were beaten by Indonesian pair Greysia Polii and Nitya Krishinda Maheswari. This means that three pairs will battle it out for the two semi-final places on Friday.

The men’s doubles was altogether a more routine affair as champions from Korea Lee Yong Dae and Yoo Yeon Seong are unbeaten with two wins.