Indonesia Open | Kidambi Srikanth knocked out as PV Sindhu advances into round two
India's badminton contingent had a bad day in office that saw Kidambi Srikanth suffer an early exit against Kento Momota in the Indonesian Open as PV Sindhu made her way to the next round by beating Thai player Pornpawee Chochuwong. India also suffered defeat in the men and mixed doubles category.
22-year old Sindhu worked her way to a hard-fought win over Thailand’s Pornpawee Chochuwong as she beat the latter by a scoreline of 21-15, 19-21, 21- 13. Sindhu raced off to a great start as she won the opening game before Chochuwong pulled level in the second game. But the experienced Indian kept her nerve to and went on to win the decider 21-13 win and advance to the second round.
Indian shuttler and defending champion, Kidambi Srikanth has come up against Japan’s Kento Momota on 10 occasions in his career of which he managed to win just three while the Japanese player won seven, and Wednesday was no different. However, the 25-year old Indian had started off well against Momota in the first round encounter and raced to a 21-12 win in the first game.
Things took a wrong turn from the second game as Momota bounced back in an epic fashion to ultimately steal the match away from the defending champion by winning the next two games by a scoreline of 21-14 and 21-15. This defeat meant that Srikanth had now suffered a fourth consecutive defeat playing against Momota, the last one of which came in the Malaysia Open last week.
In other game, men’s doubles pair of Manu Attri and Sumeeth Reddy were also defeated by the Chinese pair of Liu Cheng and Nan Zhang by a margin of 15-21, 21-15, 21-17 in a match that lasted 53 minutes.
The Mixed doubles pair of Pranav Chopra and Sikki Reddy were also knocked out of this year’s edition of the Indonesian Open by another Chinese duo of Siwei Zheng and Yaqiong Huang. The Chinese pair defeated the Indians by a scoreline of 21-12, 21-14.