NEW DELHI: Two of the country's biggest women's badminton players returned to the India Open with contrasting fortunes on the opening day of the Yonex Sunrise India Open 2023 with former champion P.V Sindhu crashing out in the first round while Saina Nehwal advancing to the next round at the K.D Jadhav Hall at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium here.
Sindhu, who returned to action at home after missing the entire second half of 2022 season due to an injury suffered at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in August, lost to Supanida Katethong of Thailand in straight games, losing 21-14, 22-20. Saina overcame Denmark's Mia Blichfeldt in three games, 21-17, 12-21, 21-19 in just over one hour.
It was overall a mixed day for India as Lakshya Sen, Satwisairaj Rankireddy/Chirag Shetty, Treesa Jolly/Gayatri Gopichand Pullela and Krishna Prasad Garaga/Vishnuvardhan Goud Panjala too advanced to the next stage.
Saina showed that she had enough and more in her reserves as she went on the offensive to counter her opponent's attacking strokes and came up with a deceptive net shot to close the match.
She will now face China's Chen Yufei in the next round. The Tokyo Olympic gold medallist defeated Michelle Li of Canada 21-19, 21-15.
In the morning session, the consecutive first-round clash between Sen and Prannoy had been the talk of the town and with both players locked 3-3 in head-to-head after last week's Malaysia Open face-off, everyone was expecting another close encounter on home turf.
Sen's strong defence and relatively slower playing conditions meant that Prannoy needed to come up with something special to pack off his younger opponent. But that was not to be as the defending champion showed how difficult it would be to breach his defence in the initial exchanges and opened up an 11-3 lead and never looked back in that game.
Prannoy managed to keep pace with Sen at the start of the second game but the youngster opened up a two-point lead at the break and then kept things flat and fast to close out the match in 45 minutes.
He will now take on Denmark's Rasmus Gemke, who got the better of former world no. 1 Kento Momota of Japan 21-15, 21-11 in the first match of the day.
Among the other Indians in the fray, the women's doubles combination of Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly had to hold their nerves to get the better of the French combination of Margot Lambert and Anne Tran 22-20, 17-21, 21-18. They will now Chinese the sixth-seeded combination of Zhang Shu Xian and Zheng Yu, who defeated Ashna Roy and Haritha MH 21-4, 21-2.
Earlier, Marin came up triumph in the clash of two former world champions beating Japan's Nozomi Okuhara 21-13, 21-18 in 39 minutes.
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