Indian shuttlers got off to a good start at the BWF World Junior Championships in Spain on day one with Bharat Raghav, Ayush Shetty and Rakshitha Ramraj winning their respective singles first-round matches.
Raghav beat England’s Michael Pang 21-17, 21-12 in the round of 128 to set up a second-round clash against French top seed Alex Lanier. Shetty booked a second-round match against Lau Jun Hiu Marcus by beating Armenia’s Manvel Harutyunyan 21-9, 21-7.
Fourth seed S Sankar Muthusamy Subramanian received a bye in the first round and will face Singapore’s Remus Ng in the round of 64 on Tuesday.
In the women’s singles, Rakshitha Ramraj secured a 21-14, 21-12 win in the first round over Sri Lanka’s Varangana Jayawardana to set up a second round clash against 16th seed Lucie Krulova.
Top seed Anupama Upadhyaya and fifth seed Unnati Hooda received a bye into the second round. While Upadhyaya will face Singapore’s Yi Ting Elsa Lai in the second round on Tuesday, Hooda will take on Sri Lanka’s Ranithma Liyanage.
India’s only loss on day one came in mixed doubles where the pair of Vignesh Thathineni and Srinidhi Narayanan lost to South Korea’s Cho Song Hyun and Kim Ye Ri 15-21, 21-12, 21-10.
The other Indian mixed doubles pairing of Samarveer and Radhika Sharma booked their spot in the round of 64 with a 10-21, 21-17, 21-19 win over Norway’s Jonathan Melgaard and Maria Hojlund Tommerup.
India’s campaign in the men’s and women’s doubles will begin on Tuesday after all four pairs received a bye in the first round.
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