The poor form of Indian shuttlers continued to haunt their performance at the Thailand Masters 2020 on being played at the Indoor Stadium Huamark in Bangkok, Thailand after first-round exits of Sameer Verma and fifth seed Kidambi Srikanth on Wednesday.
The proceedings of the day were kicked off by Sameer Verma who was up against No.7 seed Lee Zii Jia, who hails from Malaysia. Sameer Verma seemed no match to the Malaysian as he was knocked out 16-21, 15-21 in straight sets in just 39 minutes.
Srikanth was shown the door by Shesar Hiren Rhustavito of Indonesia. The Indonesian registered proved to be a tough opponent for World No-5 Srikanth, and he took the first set comfortably 21-12. Kidambi then made a strong comeback and showed what is he made of by taking the second set 14-21 to force a decider.
In the decider, Indonesia’s Shesar Hiren Rhustavito was determined to win and showed some great resilience to win the third set 12-21 to hand the Indian his third first-round exit of the season. Indonesian took 48 minutes to beat Srikanth in the BMF World Tour Super-300 category in the match played in Bangkok. He was also knocked out of the Indonesia Masters in the opening round by the same opponent on 15th January. Kidambi had suffered the same fate in the Malaysia Masters where he was knocked out in the opening round. Thus, the first-round exit from Thailand masters makes Kidambi‘s third consecutive tournament where World No-5 Indian bowed out in the first round.
Srikanth, who is currently at the 23rd spot in BWF’s Race to Tokyo rankings with April 26 being the cut off date for Olympic qualification, has got his 2020 Tokyo Olympics hopes further dented.
Later in the day, the London Olympics bronze medalist Saina Nehwal will be seen in action against Denmark’s Line Højmark Kjaersfeldt. While HS Prannoy will lock horns with 2014 Commonwealth gold medalist Malaysia’s Liew Daren, who is ranked 22 in the world.
