India Open | PV Sindhu, Kidambi Srikanth register easy wins in first round

03/27/2019

PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth started the USD 350, 000 tournaments with easy wins against Wong Wing KI Vincent and Mugdha Agrey respectively. While B Sai Praneeth and HS Prannoy also advanced to the next round, Subhankar Dey stole the limelight with a surprise win over Tommy Sugiarto.

Despite having a great head to head record of 9-3 prior to the match against Vincent, Srikanth wasn’t the clear favourite on the day sheerly for the lack of confidence the former top seed has shown over the past two years.

And the fears were well founded as after winning the first game 21-16 quite comfortably, Srikanth had an underwhelming second game where even a late recovery saw the Indian losing 18-21. However, despite being the second best for most of the deciding game, Srikanth eventually edged past the Hong Kong shuttler to in 21-19.

Sindhu, on the other hand, didn’t have any such adventure as she went past an inexperienced Agrey fairly easily. She won the match 21-18 and 21-13 with the whole match finishing in just 23 minutes. Though Agrey showed a bit of mettle in the second game not allowing Sindhu to run away with the game, the second seed eventually went on a rally of points after the break.

The best match of the day was, however, Dey taking on Indonesia star Sugiarto. Starting as the second favourite in the game, Dey went on to lose the first game 14-21, as he looked unable to keep up with Sugiarto’s pace. However, the Indian came back stronger to win the second and third game 21-18 and 21-19 to pull off a huge upset.

In other matches, while Prannoy was taken to the decider by Thailand’s Kantaphon Wangcharoen before he could win 14-21, 21-18, 21-14, so was Sai Praneeth. Kartikey Gulshan Kumar started the match with an early scare as he won the first game 24-22, but Praneeth came back to win the next two games 21-13, 21-8.

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