Three out of four Indian shuttlers who took part in the qualifiers of the Australian Open Superseries have progressed to the main draw of the tournament. Parupalli Kashyap, Siril Verma and Ruthvika Shivani Gadde will all contest in the main draw after winning both their qualifying matches on Tuesday. Shreyansh Jaiswal was the only Indian who did not make it past the qualifiers.
The 69th-ranked Kashyap first dispatched Zhao Junpeng of China 21-15, 21-18 in 34 minutes, before taking on Indonesia Open Superseries Premier finalist Kazumasa Sakai of Japan in the second qualifier just two hours after the first. Kashyap, however, steamrolled over the 47th-ranked Japanese with a 21-5, 21-16 win that took him less than 30 minutes. Kashyap faces a tough first-round match, against world No 1 and top seed Son Wan Ho of Korea, on Wednesday.
Verma cruised through his first qualifier, against Indonesia’s Yehezkiel Fritz Mainaky 21-9, 21-9, in 28 minutes, before beating his compatriot Jaiswal 21-16, 21-14. Jaiswal had beaten Australia’s Pit Seng Low 21-14, 21-11 in his first qualifier.
Gadde got the better of two Australian qualifiers with relative ease as well – Sylvina Kurniawan 21-15, 21-15, and Ruwindi Serasinghe 21-9, 21-7. The match against Serasinghe lasted just 22 minutes.
Kashyap, Verma and Gadde will join Saina Nehwal, PV Sindhu, Kidambi Srikanth, HS Prannoy, B Sai Praneeth and Ajay Jayaram in the main draw on the singles side.
In the doubles side of the main draw, India will be represented by:
- Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy (men’s doubles)
- Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty (men’s doubles)
- Francis Alwin and Kona Tarun (men’s doubles)
- Ashwini Ponappa and N Sikki Reddy (women’s doubles)
- Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponappa (mixed doubles)
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