India’s badminton teams began their Thomas and Uber Cup campaigns in fine fashion, beating Germany and Canada respectively in Bangkok on Sunday.
While the men’s team won its 5-0 Group C Thomas Cup encounter, the women won 4-1 in their Group D Uber Cup face-off.
Lakshya Sen started things off in the Thomas Cup with an easy 21-16 21-13 win over world No. 64 Max Weisskirchen.
The doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty were then stretched to three games by Jones Ralfy Jansen and Marvin Seidel but they eventually won 21-15 10-21 21-13.
World number 11 Kidambi Srikanth then lost the first game but closed out the match against Kai Schafer easily 18-21 21-9.
MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila beat Bjarne Geiss and Jan Colin Voelker a 25-23 21-15 defeat and HS Prannoy completed the 5-0 whitewash of Germany, with a 21-9 21-9 win over Matthias Kicklitz.
In the Uber Cup Group D match, P V Sindhu gave a flying start to India against Canada with a 21-17 21-10 win over Michelle Li in 33 minutes.
Canada, however, levelled the scores with Rachel Honderich and Kristen Tsai beating the Indian doubles pair of Shruti Mishar and Simran Singhi lost 19-21 12-21.
But after that reverse, the Indians won all the remaining three matches. Aakarshi Kashyap beat Wen Yu Zhang 17-21 21-18 21-17 in women’s singles.
The Indian pair of Tanisha Crasto and Treesa Jolly made it 3-1 with a 21-9 21-15 win over Catherine Choi and Josephine Wu before Ashmita Chaliha completed the formalities with a 12-21 21-11 22-20 victory over Rachel Chan in women’s singles.
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