Sindhu, Srikanth, Prannoy through to Round 2 

Tokyo, September 11

PV Sindhu had to toil hard even as Kidambi Srikanth and HS Prannoy scored easy victories to progress to the second round of their respective events at the Japan Open.

Third seed Sindhu had to sweat it out for 53 minutes before prevailing 21-17 7-21 21-13 over unseeded local girl Sayaka Takahashi in her opening round. Sindhu will next play Chinese Fangjie Gao, who defeated Jakka Vaishnavi Reddy 21-10 21-8. 

In the men’s singles, Prannoy defeated current Asian Games gold medallist Jonathan Christie of Indonesia 21-18 21-17 while Srikanth got the better of Chinese Yuxiang Huang 21-13 21-15 in another first round match. While Prannoy will be up against Anthony Sinisuka Ginting of Indonesia in the second round, Srikanth will take on Vincent Wong Wing Ki of Hong Kong.  

Verma ousted

However, it was curtains for Sameer Verma who fought hard before going down 18-21 22-20 10-21 to South Korea’s Lee Dong Keun in the opening round.  

Chopra-Reddy in Round 2

Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponappa were shown the door by second seeds Yilyu Wang and Dongping Huang of China 13-21 17-21, while Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N Sikki Reddy stormed into the second round with a 21-9 21-6 victory over the Malaysian duo of Mathew Fogarty and Isabel Zhong. Chopra and Reddy will face another Malaysian combination, Peng Soon Chang and Liu Ying Goh, in the next round. 

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