Indonesia Open badminton: Sindhu, Prannoy handed tough draw; Srikanth, Lakshya in fray too

Jakarta (Indonesia) : Top Indian singles players P.V Sindhu and H.S. Prannoy were handed tough draws while Kidambi Srikanth and Lakshya Sen too are expected to face tricky opponents in the first round of the Indonesia Open 2023, which starts here on Tuesday.

Sindhu, the two-time Olympic medallist, will open against Indonesia’s Gregoria Mariska Tunjung in the first round, hoping to make up for her recent setbacks. The bigger worry for the Indian badminton star will be the fact that she has lost her last two meetings against the world No. 9 Tunjung this season — the first in the final of the Madrid Spain Masters and then in the semis of the Malaysia Masters.

If she gets past her first round opponent, Sindhu is likely to run into Chinese Taipei’s third seeded Tai Tzu Ying, who will open against China’s Yue Han, in the second round.

Sindhu, currently 13th in the women’s singles world rankings, will look to bounce back following back-to-back first-round exits from the Singapore Open and the Thailand Open. The former world champion shuttler was ousted in the opening round for the fifth time this season at the Singapore Open.

Aakarshi Kashyap will take on world No.2 An Se Young of South Korea in the Round of 32 in the USD 1.25 million prize money BWF World Tour Super 1000 event.

In the men’s singles, world No. 8 H.S. Prannoy, who won the Malaysia Masters last month to open his BWF Tour titles account, will face Japan’s world No. 11 Kenta Nishimoto in his first-round match.

Commonwealth Games 2022 champion Lakshya Sen, who is currently 19th in the world rankings, will open his campaign against world No. 10 Lee Zii Jia of Malaysia in the Round of 32 while former world No. 1 Kidambi Srikanth will play Lu Guang Zu in the opener.

It will be the doubles pairs that will take the court first on Tuesday with Commonwealth Games bronze medallists Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand taking on Japan’s Rin Iwanaga and Kie Nakanishi in a women’s doubles match.

India’s top men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, seeded seventh in the event, will open their campaign against the French pair Christo Popov and Toma Junior Popov in the first round. The other men’s doubles combination of M.R. Arjun and Dhruv Kapila will face off against Malaysia’s eighth-seeded Ong Yew Sin and Teo Es Yi.

Priyanshu Rajawat, who caused a couple of upsets in the Singapore Open recently will face
Kunlavut Vitidsarn of Thailand in the first round.