Rising Indian shuttler Lakshya Sen progressed to his first quarter-finals at the prestigious All England Championships with a straight-games win against Thomas Rouxel on Thursday in Birmingham.
For HS Prannoy, however, it was the end of the road at the event after he went down in straight games in the men’s singles second round against top seed Kento Momota in an entertaining match.
The 19-year-old Lakshya, who had claimed five titles on the BWF tour in 2019, saw off France’s Rouxel 21-18, 21-16 in a match the Indian would have expected to win.
Lakshya, who had claimed the Asian Junior Championships title, the World Junior championships bronze and Youth Olympics Games silver in 2018, will next face Netherland’s Mark Caljouw who defeat Ireland’s Nhat Nguyen. Incidentally, Nguyen has knocked out Srikanth Kidambi on day one.
After the Indonesian team’s forced withdrawal last night (Anthony Ginting was supposed to face Thomas Rouxel), Srikanth’s defeat and Sen’s own win against world No 18 Wangchaoren, the draw opened up for the Indian youngster. After a memorable debut in Birmingham, where he pushed Viktor Axelsen to the limit last edition, Sen now has a chance to go all the way till semis.
In what turned out to be a rather stroke-filled match, Prannoy went down fighting in straight games. A former top 10 player, Prannoy couldn’t find his way across the defence of Momota, with the Japanese looking in great touch playing his first event since a horrific accident that saw him undergo a eye surgery last year.
The Indian lost 15-21, 14-21 in a 48-minute match to bow out of the competition.
Also ousted from the tournament was the mixed doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa, who lost 19-21, 9-21 to Japanese duo of Yuki Kaneko and Misaki Matsutomo in the opening round. The Japanese duo, ranked 23 in the world, were involved in a tough battle in the early stages of the match but just ran away with it from the second half of the opener.
All England Open, day one results and report here.
Later in the day, PV Sindhu will continue her quest for the elusive All England title. The fifth-seeded Indian will face Denmark’s Line Christophersen next ahead of a potential quarter-final against former world No 1 Akane Yamaguchi. Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty will meet the formidable Danish pair of Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen, who had defeated the Indian duo on way to their title win at the Swiss Open earlier this month.