PV Sindhu, women’s doubles duo of Ashwini Ponnappa and Sikki Reddy and men’s doubles team of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty gave a winning start to the Indian campaign at the All England Championships in Birmingham on Wednesday. However, eight seed Kidambi Srikanth suffered a shock loss against world No.57 Nhat Nguyen of Ireland 11-21, 21-15, 12-21 while Parupalli Kashyap lost to Kento Momota after giving a tough time to the world No.1 Japanese shuttler in the second game 13-21, 20-22. Kashyap saved three match points before losing the second game.
The Indian doubles teams faced no such issues as they warmed with dominant victories. While Ashwini-Sikki defeated Benyapa Aimsaard and Nuntakarn Aimsaard 21-14, 21-12 in just 30 minutes, Satwik-Chirag took only 19 minutes to outlast the Indo-English combine of Aniruddha Mayekar and Nikhar Garg 21-7, 21-10.
Fifth seed PV Sindhu worked hard in the second game to beat Soniia Cheah of Malaysia in the first round 21-11, 21-17. In the second round Sindhu will face Line Christophersen of Denmark, who defeated Martina Repiska of Slovekia.
Men’s double duo of MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila lost to Ong Yew Sin and Teo Ee Yi of Malaysia 13-21, 12-21 and
After initial hiccups due to Covid-19 scare, the morning session of the $850,000 tournament was cancelled and matches started around 1.30 GMT. Late on Tuesday, Indian contingent was worried as it was informed that three of its players and one support staff tested positive for Covid-19. However, the second tests cleared not only the Indians but also all other players who tested positive in the first test.