B Sai Praneeth to lead Indian challenge for Asia Team meet
B Sai Praneeth will lead the men's squad of former World No.1 Kidambi Srikanth, HS Prannoy, Subhankar Dey and Lakshya Sen.
B Sai Praneeth will lead the men's squad of former World No.1 Kidambi Srikanth, HS Prannoy, Subhankar Dey and Lakshya Sen.
World number six Sindhu had a dream run at the World Championships in Basel, Switzerland, winning the title last year, but she made early exits in the rest of the season.
Srikanth won 21-12 21-11 in 36 minutes, whereas his next opponent Kashyap got a walkover from Frenchman Lucas Corvee.
Sindhu did not look in control from the start of the match and ended up losing the first game. She, however, showed signs of a comeback in the second game but Young proved too good for the Indian and clinched it to enter the third round.
Saina Nehwal lost the first game 15-21 and in the second game threw away a 20-16 lead at one stage to lose the decider 21-23.
Kashyap registered a comfortable 21-16 21-16 over Lu Chia Hung of Chinese Taipei in a men's singles match that lasted 42 minutes.
This loss would be a difficult one to digest for the 5th seeded PV Sindhu as she had a match point in the second game itself but failed to convert it into a win.
Starting from where she left in the World Championship, the Olympic silver-medallist brought another one of her strong performances on the court to defeat the 20th ranked Chinese player.
Life after that historic gold has been all about felicitations and the Indian will now have to quickly turn her focus back on badminton as she remains the country's best bet at the China Open, a title she had won in 2016.
It is to be noted that while PV Sindhu and B Sai Praneeth won a gold and bronze respectively at the World Championships held in Basel, Switzerland, India also bagged in as many as 12 more medals in the Para-Badminton World Championship held in the same city.
