In Badminton World Championships in Nanjing, China, H.S. Prannoy, Sameer Verma and Sai Praneeth have entered the second round of men’s singles.
World No. 11 Prannoy beat New Zealand’s Abhinav Manota 21-12, 21-11, while Sameer dumped France’s Lucas Corvee 21-13, 21-10 to progress to the second round. Sai Praneeth got walkover against Son Wan Ho of South Korea.
Kidambi Srikanth will play his first-round match with Nhat Nguyen of Ireland tomorrow. Prannoy will face Brazil’s Ygor Coelho, while Swiss Open champion Sameer will have an uphill task of taming the legendary Lin Dan of China.
Indian mixed doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa prevailed 21-9, 22-20 over Denmark’s Niclas Nohr and Sara Thygesen. The world no 39 Indian combine will next face the German pairing of Mark Lamsfuss and Isabel Herttrich, seeded 15th.
India’s top mixed doubles duo of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N Sikki Reddy, ranked 22nd, also made a good start defeating Czech Republic’s Jakub Bitman and Alzbeta Basova 21-17, 21-15 to set up a clash with the Indonesian combine of Hafiz Faizal and Gloria Emanuelle Widjaja.
Men’s doubles pair of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy defeated Bulgarian pair Daniel Nikolov and Ivan Rusev 21-13, 21-18 to also make it to the second round.
Young Indian mixed doubles pairing of Saurabh Sharma and Anoushka Parikh, and Rohan Kapoor and Kuhoo Garg, also pulled off impressive wins to advance to the second round. Saurabh and Anoushka defeated Nigerian combo of Enejoh Abah and Peace Orji 21-13 21-12, while Rohan and Kuhoo beat Canada’s Toby Ng and Rachel Honderich 21-19 21-6 in another mixed doubles match.
However, Sanyogita Ghorpade and Prajakta Sawant went down fighting 20-22, 14-21 to Turkey’s Bengisu Ercetin and Nazlican Inci in the women’s doubles competition.