BWF World Championships 2018 | HS Prannoy and Ponnappa/Rankireddy off to winning start

Prannoy got off to a promising start at this year’s BWF World Championships in China as he outclassed New Zealand’s Abhinav Manota in the first round of the tournament. The Indian won the opening round with a straight sets win by a scoreline of 21-12, 21-11 in a match that lasted just 28 minutes. Prannoy dominated Manota right from the get-go and the latter was nowhere close to giving the Indian a challenge as he made plenty of unforced errors.

The Indian contingent also saw another win in the men’s singles category with Sameer Verma overcoming the challenge of Lucas Corvee in straight games of 21-13, 21-10 in 38 minutes. The win meant that Sameer has booked a place in Round 2 of the event where he will go up against five-time World Champion Lin Dan. 

The good day for Indian badminton continued as the men's doubles pair of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy followed up Prannoy’s win with a victory over  Bulgarian pair Daniel Nikolov and Ivan Rusev. The dominant duo, who had won the Lagos International recently, beat their opponents by a score of 21-13 21-18 to make it to the second round. 

The trend continued as Indian mixed doubles duo Ashwini Ponnappa and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy beat the Danish pair of Niclas Nohr and Sara Thygesen in the opening round of the competition. The Indian pair beat their Danish counterparts by a margin of 21-9, 22-20 in 36 minutes.

However, women’s doubles pair of Sanyogita Ghorpade and Prajakta Sawant went bowed out of the tournament in the first round as they lost in straight sets to Turkey's Bengisu Ercetin and Nazlican Inci by a score of 20-22 14-21 in 34 minutes.