French Open: Saina, Srikanth sail into second round
Saina Nehwal outclassed Japan’s Saena Kawakami 21-11, 21-11 in the women’s singles, while defending champion Srikanth beat Hong Kong’s Wong Wing Ki Vincent 21-19, 21-13 in the men’s singles match.
Published : Oct 24, 2018 19:53 IST
Top Indian shuttlers Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth advanced to the second round of the French Open with straight-game wins but it was curtains for Sameer Verma at the USD 750,000 BWF event here on Wednesday.
Saina, who finished runner-up in the Denmark Open last week, outclassed Japan’s Saena Kawakami 21-11, 21-11 in the women’s singles, while defending champion Srikanth beat Hong Kong’s Wong Wing Ki Vincent 21-19, 21-13 in the men’s singles match in the opening round of the World Tour Super 750 event.
World No. 10 Saina will face either 2017 world champion Nozomi Okuhara of Japan or Spain’s Beatriz Corrales next. Fifth seeded Srikanth will meet Korean Lee Dong Keun.
READ: Sindhu storms into second round
2017 Singapore Open Champion B. Sai Praneeth also crossed the opening hurdle, beating Brazil’s Ygor Coelho 21-13, 21-17 to set up a clash with Asian Games gold medallist Jonatan Christie of Indonesia.
Sameer, who had reached the quarterfinals last week, went down fighting 21-16, 17-21, 15-21 to Christie in a little over an hour match.
Men’s doubles pair of Manu Attri and B. Sumeeth Reddy defeated Korean duo of Min Hyuk Kang and Kim Won Ho 21-18, 21-17. They will square off against either Chinese third seeds Liu Cheng and Zhang Nan or Danish combination of Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen.
Women’s doubles pair of Meghana Jakkampudi and Poorvisha S. Ram also entered the second round after defeating Belgium’s Lise Jaques and Flore Vandenhoucke 21-12, 21-12. The duo will face the fourth seeded Indonesian pair of Greysia Polii and Apriyani Rahayu.
Men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty also had a good outing as they outwitted German combination of Jones Ralfy Jansen and Josche Zurwonne 21-13, 21-15 in 35 minutes. They duo will cross swords with Chinese pair of He Jiting and Tan Qiang next.
However, Satwiksairaj and Ashwini Ponnappa couldn’t get across the husband-wife combination of Chris Adcock and Gabrielle Adcock from England, going down narrowly 22-24, 21-18, 19-21 in mixed doubles
Top seeded Chinese mixed doubles pair of Zheng Siwei and Huang Yaqiong ended the campaign of Rohan Kapoor and Kuhoo Garg with a 21-5, 21-10 win.