Although the Indian shuttlers have disappointed in the French Open on Wednesday but Saina Nehwal made sure that there would be a positive end of Day 2 for the country. Saina beat Hong Kong’s Cheung Ngan Yi 23—21, 21—17, in 42 minutes, to advance to the second round of the French Open on Wednesday.
French Open: Saina Nehwal enters 2nd Round
World No. 9 shuttler Saina and the men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty were the only Indians to record wins as the others continued their poor run. Rankireddy and Chirag recorded a 21—16, 21—14 win over Jelle Maas and Robin Tabeling of the Netherlands.
Saina will be joining PV Sindhu in the second round of the BWF Super 750 tournament. Sindhu had defeated Canada’s Michelle Li to move forward in the tournament earlier on Tuesday. Sindhu defeated Li in straight games 21-15, 21-13 in just 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, Kidambi Srikanth, Parupalli Kashyap, and Sameer Verma made an early exit from the competition earlier in the day.
Srikanth lost in the first round against Tien Chen Chou of Taiwan. While Srikanth started off on a positive note by taking the first game 21-15 but couldn’t keep the momentum going and lost the next two sets by 7-21, 14-21 to get knocked out.
On the other hand, while P Kashyap took on Tien Chen Chou of Hong Kong and lost in straight games 11-21, 9-21, Sameer Verma also lost his contest against Kenta Nishimoto of Japan by 22-20, 18-21, 18-21 in his first-round match.
Meanwhile, Subhankar Dey is the only player from India left in the men’s singles competition. The world number 42 Indian rallied to beat his world number 17 opponent Tommy Sugiarto of Indonesia by 15-21 21-14 21-17 in a one hour 18 minutes first-round match in the BWF Super 750 tournament.
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