PV Sindhu rocks Martina Repiska's world in BWF World Championships

Huelva (Spain), December 14

Defending champion PV Sindhu breezed past Slovakia’s Martina Repiska 21-7 21-9 to make a confident start at the BWF World Championships here today.

In the men’s singles, fast-rising Lakshya Sen prevailed over 15th-seeded Japanese Kenta Nishimoto 22-20 15-21 21-18 to progress to the pre-quarterfinals along with Kidambi Srikanth, who rallied to defeat China’s Li Shi Feng 15-21 21-18 21-17.

In the men’s doubles, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty beat Chinese Taipei’s Lee Jhe-Huei and Yang Po-Hsuan 27-25 21-17 in 43 minutes.

However, the mixed doubles pairing of Saurabh Sharma and Anoushka Parikh suffered a straight-game loss to Malaysians Tan Kian Meng and Lai Pei Jing, going down 8-21 18-21.

World No. 7 Sindhu took just 24 minutes to beat her unseeded opponent. Seeded sixth in the tournament which she won in 2019, when it was last held, the two-time Olympics medallist began on a bright note and raced to a 4-1 lead.

Repiska tried to bounce back with two points, but the fancied Indian played some deft strokes to make it 11-4 at the break. She took only 10 minutes to pocket the first game.

The script remained the same in the second. Sindhu maintained a firm grip over the proceedings to burst to a 6-0 lead in just two minutes. At midpoint, Sindhu was leading 11-1 and completed the formality with a dominant performance.

Sen, on the other hand, was made to toil hard by Nishimoto as it took him one hour and 22 minutes to prevail over his Japanese opponent. — PTI