Chris and Gabby Adcock are through to the quarter-finals of the mixed doubles at the Yonex All England Open Badminton Championships at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham.
The fifth seeds got England’s day three challenge at the 104th Championships off to the perfect start with a 21-13 21-15 win over German pair Peter Kaesbauer and Isabel Herttrich.
The Adcocks, who won their first Superseries title in Hong Kong in November, are bidding to become the first home winners since Nathan Robertson and Gail Emms in 2005.
In the quarter-finals they will face 2012 Olympic and 2011 World champions Zhang Nan and Zhao Yunlei if the Chinese top seeds win the last match of tonight’s programme against Korean pair Shin Baek Choel and Eom Hye Won.
Chris Adcock said: “We both had two long games yesterday but we train harder than what we play and we showed that today and also last night.
“If we face Zhang and Zhao they’re obviously world number ones for a reason but we have beaten them before so I think it’s one of those games where we’ve got nothing to lose, we can go out and give a good performance and hope for the best.
“We’ve definitely played better today but I think it’s good to build your way into the tournament, I’m glad we’ve not played our best yet because hopefully that’s to come tomorrow and after that.”
Gabby said: “We were really happy with that performance, I think we stuck to our plan really well. We’ve played them before and you can get into a scrappy performance with them if you don’t play well so we’re happy with that.
“They’re pretty good in smaller games so we wanted to make the court as big as possible and make them move a bit.
“We’ve got nothing to lose tomorrow and we going to go out and give it a good go in front of our home crowd.”
But first Chris Adcock will face Zhang when he and Andy Ellis take on the Chinese ace and former world and Olympic men’s doubles champion Fu Haifeng in the men’s doubles second round later this afternoon.
England also have Rajiv Ouseph, Gabby Adcock and Lauren Smith, and Chris Langridge and Peter Mills in second-round action during the afternoon and evening session.