Indian mixed doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa recorded one of the biggest wins of their career, stunning Olympic silver medallists Chan Peng Soon and Goh Liu Ying in the first round of Thailand Open.
In the singles categories, seeded Indian players Saina Nehwal and K Srikanth started off with contrasting wins on Wednesday.
In what was the biggest result on the day for India, the unseeded Indian mixed doubles pair battled for one hour and two minutes to get past the fifth seeded Malaysian pair of 21-18, 18-21, 21-17.
It is only the second time that world No 23 Ponnappa and Rankireddy got the better of Soon and Ying, ranked fifth in the world currently. The Indian pair had defeated their Malaysian opponents in the mixed team event of Gold Coast Commonwealth Games last year but lost to them in the individual event semi-finals. Both those matches were hard-fought.
The Indian duo were trailing 3-7 in the opening round but fought their way back and then stayed ahead for the rest of the game to close it out 21-18. Roles were reversed after the change of ends as Goh and Chan kept the Indian duo at an arm’s length for most of the second half.
Ponnappa and Rankireddy were seemingly down and out when they trailed 5-11 in the decider but the change of ends bought about a change of fortunes. The Indians won 8 points on the trot to go into the lead and stayed there for the remainder of the decider.
Ponnappa and Rankireddy will now play Indonesia’s Alfian Eko Prasetya and Marsheilla Gischa Islami in the second round.
Meanwhile, fifth seed Srikanth survived a scare in his opener. The Indian was made to toil hard for one hour and seven minutes by Chinese qualifier Ren Peng Bo before winning 21-13, 17-21, 21-19.
Srikanth dominated the back-end of the opening game to race from 12-12 to 21-13. The second game was a much tighter affair with both players exchanging leads repeatedly but it Ren’s turn to run away close to the finish line, winning six of the last eight points.
An upset was definitely on the cards when Srikanth was trailing 11-15 in the decider but he clawed his way back to 16-16, from where the score progressed to 17-17, 18-18, 19-19 before Srikanth finally closed the match with two straight points.
Srikanth will be up against Thailand’s Khosit Phetpradab in the second round.
Saina Nehwal made a winning return from her injury break, progressing to the 2nd round by defeating Phittayaporn Chaiwan 21-17, 21-19. Nehwal, seeded seventh, will face unseeded Sayaka Takahashi in the second round.
Earlier, P Kashyap also made his way into the 2nd round after a hard-fought 18-21 21-8 21-14 win over Misha Zilberman.
HS Prannoy joined his compatriots in progressing as well, registering a 21-16, 22-20 win over Wong Wing Ki Vincent. The Hong Kong shuttler fought hard against Prannoy but the Indian extended the record against his opponent to 5-1 after a 46-minute encounter.
It was a disappointing result for eighth seed Sameer Verma as he blew an early lead against Lee Zii Jia of Malaysia (ranked No 17) to lose 23-21, 11-21, 5-21. After winning a tight first game, the Indian, ranked four places higher than his opponent, was blown away in the second and third games.
In another mixed doubles tie later, Pranaav Jerry Chopra and Sikki Reddy managed to defeat lower-ranked pairing of Kohei Gondo and Ayane Kurihara 21-16, 21-13 to progress in 36 minutes.
Lady luck smiled on Subhankar Dey as he was handed a walkover by top seed and world No 1 Kento Momota of Japan in his opening round contest.
However, qualifier Sourabh Verma’s campaign came to an end in the opening round of the main draw. He fought hard for 64 minutes against seventh seed Kanta Tsuneyama of Japan before going down 21-23, 21-19, 5-21.
In women’s singles, Sai Uttejitha Rao Chukka was no match for China’s Chen Xiao Xin, losing 17-21, 7-21 in the first round.
In the final match of the day involving an Indian, there was a good comeback from Sai Praneeth as he progressed to the second round, defeating Thailand’s Kantaphon Wangcharoen 17-21, 21-17, 21-15 in a 71-minute encounter.
In the second round, Subhankar Dey takes on Sai Praneeth in an all-Indian clash, while Prannoy and Kashyap face tough challenges against sixth seed Kenta Nishimoto and third seed Chou Tien Chen respectively.
With PTI Inputs
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