Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty will lead the home charge in the India Open super 750 badminton competition, which begins on Tuesday in Delhi.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty will lead the home challenge at the India Open super 750 badminton tournament, which begins on Tuesday in Delhi, looking to bring home their first silverware of the new season. Satwik and Chirag have been a cut above the rest of the Indians in 2023, with six titles, and the runner-up result at the Malaysia super 1000 has further spiced things up as the Indian shuttlers try to produce at home. Last season, none of the Indians advanced past the second round of the BAI flagship tournament, which was upgraded to super 750 in 2023.
Satwik-Chirag and Lakshya Sen won the men’s doubles and men’s singles titles in the 2022 edition, and the home shuttlers will want to live up to expectations and prove that last year was an outlier.
Satwik and Chirag will be fired up after coming up just short in the final in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, so they will be ready to go the distance this time.
“We want to do well in our home country next week, so we don’t want to relax with this, we are more hungry and next week we want to do well in front of our home crowd,” Satwik stated at a press conference on Sunday.
The second seeds Satwik and Chirag, who were forced to withdraw from the tournament before the second round last year due to an injury suffered by the former, will meet world No. 25. Taipei’s Fang-Jen Lee and Fang-Chih Lee in their first round.
“We’re not finished yet,” Chirag added. The India Open is next week, and we want to go one better.” While Satwik-Chirag will be one of the favorites, all eyes will be on HS Prannoy, Lakshya Sen, and Kidambi Srikanth in men’s singles, especially with two-time Olympic medalist P V Sindhu out with a knee injury.
After a dismal showing in Malaysia, world No. 8 Prannoy and Lakshya will try to get back on track soon, while Srikanth must have regained confidence after defeating Jonatan Christie in the first round last week.
After losing in the first round in Kuala Lumpur, Prannoy and Sen will be looking for a solid start as they face Chinese Taipei’s Chou Tien Chen and Priyanshu Rajawat.
Srikanth, on the other hand, appeared in good form during his opening round last week, and it will be critical for him to go deep into the event that he won in 2015, bearing the race to Olympic qualification in mind.
The former world number one will take on Hong Kong’s Lee Cheuk Yiu in the first round.
There is a two-way competition for the second Olympic qualification berth, with Srikanth, a 2016 Rio Olympic Olympian, now rated 24th and Sen ahead at 17th. Prannoy, in eighth place, remains the leader.
The Olympic competition in women’s doubles has also heated up, with the new combination of Ashwini Ponnappa, a two-time Olympian, and Tanisha Crasto, as well as Commonwealth Games bronze medallists Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly – both rated 14th in Olympic Games qualification.
Ashwini-Tanisha reached three consecutive finals in December of last year, winning one of them in the Guwahati Masters.
The couple advanced to the second round in Malaysia and will try to continue their fine form when they face the world No. 10 Thai combination of Rawinda Prajongjai and Jongkolphan Kititharakul.Treesa and Gayatri, on the other side, will face fourth-seeded Japanese players Nami Matsuyama and Chiharu Shida.
