A challenging draw stands in the way but India’s top shuttlers PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal will fancy their chances of ending a nearly two-decade old title jinx at the All England Championships, starting Wednesday.
Saina Nehwal
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Chief national coach P Gopichand was the last Indian to win the championship back in 2001. Only the top 32 in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings qualify for the tournament and out of them, only three Indians have been seeded -- the third being Kidambi Srikanth (seeded seventh) in the men’s event.
Sindhu will square off against former world no 2 Sung Ji Hyun of South Korea at the USD one million event. Saina, seeded eighth, will start her campaign against Scotland’s Kristy Gilmour. The star shuttlers have had contrasting results against their first round opponents.
While Saina enjoys a 6-0 overall record against Gilmour, Sindhu has been troubled by Sung Ji but leads 8-6 in their previous 14 encounters. If Sindhu puts it past the Korean, she will run into either Russian Evgeniya Kosetskaya or Hong Kong’s Cheung Ngan Yi in the second round.
A favourable result will then pit Sindhu against third-seeded Chinese Chen Yufei in the quarter-finals. “Each round will be comparatively tough. Each point is important to me. I am playing Sung Ji in the first round. It is important for me to focus right from the start,” said the 23-year-old, who had reached the semi-finals in the last edition.
Saina remains the only Indian to come close to winning the prestigious title, finishing runner-up in 2015. The seasoned Hyderabadi will face either Denmark’s Line Hojmark Kjaersfeldt or China’s Cai Yanyan if she happens to win the first round.
The vastly experienced Indian is expected to cross at least the second round and is likely to face Tai Tzu Ying, against whom she has lost 12 consecutive times. In the men’s event, Srikanth will take on Frenchman Brice Leverdez in the opening round while an in-form Sameer Verma will start against world no.1 Viktor Axelsen of Denmark.
Among others, B Sai Praneeth and HS Prannoy will face each other in the opening round. In women’s doubles, Ashwini Ponnapa & N Sikki Reddy will play the seventh-seeded Japanese pair Shiho Tanaka & Koharu Yonemoto, while Meghana Jakkampudi & Poorvisha S Ram will square off against Russia’s Ekaterina Bolotova & Alina Davletova. In men’s doubles, Manu Attri & B Sumeeth Reddy will face China’s Ou Xuanyi & Ren Xiangyu in the first round.