World Championships: Lakshya Sen begins with a bang, B Sai Praneeth out

Tokyo, August 22

Commonwealth Games champion Lakshya Sen trounced Danish Hans-Kristian Solberg Vittinghus in straight games to progress to the men’s singles second round at the BWF World Championships here today.

India also registered twin wins in the women’s and mixed doubles on the opening day. However, B Sai Praneeth bowed out after losing in three games to world No. 4 Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei.

The 20-year-old Sen, who had won bronze on his debut in Spain last year, prevailed 21-12 21-11 over an erratic Vittinghus in his opening match. Earlier, Praneeth lost 15-21 21-15 15-21 to Chen in little over an hour. It was yet another forgettable outing in Tokyo for Praneeth, following his struggles at the last year’s Olympic Games.

However, Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy progressed to the women’s doubles second round with a 21-7 21-9 win over Maldives’ Aminath Nabeeha Abdul Razzaq and Fathimath Nabaaha Abdul Razzaq. They have an uphill task of taming top seeds Chen Qing Chen and Jia Yi Fan of China next.

In the mixed doubles, Tanisha Crasto and Ishaan Bhatnagar defeated Patrick Scheiel and Franziska Volkmann 21-13 21-13 B Sumeeth Reddy and Manu Attri lost 11-21 21-19 15-21 to Masayuki Onodera and Hiroki Okamura in the men’s doubles. In the women’s singles, Malvika Bansod lost 14-21 12-21 to Line Christophersen.