All England Championships: Saina Nehwal, Kidambi Srikanth Knocked Out, Lakshya Sen Advances

Birmingham: Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth's woeful form continued as they were dumped out of the first round of All England Championships on Wednesday and Sai Praneeth and Parupalli Kashyap joined them out of the tournament.

However, youngster Lakshya Sen advanced to the second round in his maiden appearance at the tournament. Joining him and PV Sindhu in the second round were women's doubles pair of Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy.

Saina and Srikanth had extremely tough first round matches and it proved to be too much for them as they failed to hold their own and were defeated in straight games.

Srikanth lost to third seed and reigning Olympic champion Chen Long 15-21, 16-21 in 43 minutes. Srikanth and Saina are trying to squeeze their way to 2020 Tokyo Olympics but the possibility looks dim at the moment considering their recent performances.

Saina was up against former world No.1 Akane Yamaguchi of Japan and was completely outplayed 11-21, 8-21 in just 28 minutes to bow out of the tournament.

Ashwini-Sikki advanced to the second round with the scoreline reading 5-4 in the first game as their English opponents Jenny Moore and Victoria Williams retired hurt after just five minutes of play.

They will next be up against seventh seed Misaki Matsutomo and Ayaka Takahashi.

Sai Praneeth was dumped out by world No.36 Zhao Jun Peng in a woeful performance. He was crushed 12-21, 13-21 in mere 33 minutes in the first round of the tournament.

Kashyap retired hurt after just a minute of play with the scoreline reading 0-3 against Indonesia's Shesar Hiren Rhustavito.

Lakshya Sen was the saving grace of singles for India apart from Sindhu as he registered a come-from-behind win against higher-ranked Lee Cheuk Yiu of Hong Kong. He won 17-21, 21-8, 21-17 in just a minute less than an hour.

He will next be up against former world champion Viktor Axelsen of Denmark.

Earlier, Sindhu had defeated Beiwen Zhang in straight sets to make it to the second round while mixed doubles pair of Pranaav Jerry Chopra-Sikki lost out fighting against top seed Zheng Si Wei and Huang Yaqiong.