Indian star badminton player Lakshya Sen’s poor run of form continued as he suffered a first-round exit at the Swiss Open 2023. Commonwealth Games champion Sen proved to be no match against Cheuk Yiu Lee losing 18-21, 11-21 to bow out of the men’s singles competition. The eighth-seeded Sen has already dropped to 25 in the world rankings after an indifferent start to the year when he was defending big points at the India Open and All England Championship. Sen’s compatriots Kidambi Srikanth, Mithun Manjunath, and HS Prannoy progressed to the next round of the BWF World Tour Super 300 event in Basel on Wednesday.
Indian senior shuttler Srikanth fought a good battle and was made to dig deep to get the better of his Chinese opponent. The 2021 World Championships silver medalist Srikanth played a solid game to emerge victorious against China’s Weng Hong Yang 21-16, 15-21, 21-18 to set up a second-round clash against Hong Kong’s Cheuk Yiu Lee, who dashed the hopes of world No.12 Sen.
Earlier in the day, Mithun Manjunath, who was promoted from reserves, secured a straight-game 21-8, 21-17 win over Joran Kweekel of Netherlands to sail into men’s singles pre-quarters. The 24-year-old Indian will next face qualifier Chia Hao Lee of Chinese Taipei, who stunned seventh-seeded Chinese shuttler Jun Peng Zhao 21-12, 21-13 in another first round match.
Meanwhile, Prannoy played a solid match to beat last week’s All England Open finalist Shi Yu Qi of China 21-17, 19-21, 21-17. Prannoy will lock horns with French player Christo Popov in the round-of-16. In men’s doubles, the Indian pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty outclassed the Malaysian combination of Xin Yuan Boon and Tien Ci Wong 21-15, 21-18 to seal their spot in the pre-quarterfinals. The men’s doubles pair of Dhruv Kapila and MR Arjun went down in three games to Akira Koga and Taichi Saito, losing 17-21, 21-18, 21-11.
It was a bad day for the Indian women’s doubles on the court. The women’s doubles pair of Sikki Reddy and Arathi Sara Sunil also crashed out in the opening round, losing 12-21,14-21 against the Japanese pair Sayaka Hobara and Yui Suizu. Earlier, Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly crashed out in the first round. Gayatri and Treesa, who reached the semi-finals at the All England Open last week, lost 14-21, 14-21 to second seeds Apriyani Rahayu and Siti Fadia Silva Ramadhanti of Indonesia on Tuesday.
