After PV Sindhu moved into the 2nd round, it was a disappointing day for other big names as Kidambi Srikanth, Saina Nehwal, Sai Praneeth and Parupalli Kashyap crashed out in the first round of the All England Badminton Championship played at Arena, Birmingham on Wednesday.
In the men’s singles, Kidambi Srikanth lost to Chen Long in two straight sets by 15-21, 16-21. With this loss, the chances of Srikanth qualifying for Tokyo Olympics have been bleaker as he would lose around 3500 points and may slip out of top 25 rankings. It was a disappointing performance by the Indian who looked out of sorts right from word go.
After being outplayed 15-21 in the first game, Srikanth could not control his strokes and was trailing 4-11 at the interval in 2nd game. After the interval, the Indian struggled at 8-18. From there onwards, Srikanth tried his best to come back into the game, but it was too late to recover and finally lost the match at 16-21 to be knocked out in the first round.
The Bronze medallists from World Championship, Sai Praneeth suffered a straight-set loss to 36th ranked played Zhao Jun Peng of China by 12-21, 13-21. It was a disappointing performance by Sai who looked out of sorts and lost the match in two straight sets to be knocked out in the first round.
Parupalli Kashyap was forced to retire hurt when he was trailing 0-3 in the first game against Indonesian Rhustavito.
Playing his first match on such big stage, Lakshya Sen produced a brilliant comeback to beat Lee Chik Yu of Hong Kong in three games by 17-21, 21-8 and 21-17 to move into the 2nd round. In the first game, the youngster started off to a great start taking an early 7-4 lead, but Lee showed his class and raced towards a win in the first set. Lakshya fought back strongly in the next two games to move into 2nd round. He will take on Victor Axlesen of Denmark.
It was a disappointing performance by Saina Nehwal who looked out of control and lost his first-round match to 3rd seeded Akane Yamaguchi in two straight sets by 11-21, 8-21 to be knocked out in the first round. With this loss, Saina chances of qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics has taken a massive dent. Now, the Indian is at number 22 in Race to Tokyo Charts and need to squeeze to top 16 before April 28 Cut off date.
