The World Championships medalist Kidambi Srikanth advanced to the round two of the men’s singles event at the ongoing Thailand Masters badminton tournament on Wednesday. Srikanth, the world number 47 defeated Israel’s Daniil Dubovenko, 74th in badminton rankings by 21-13, 21-18 within two successive games in Pathumwan on Wednesday, as per Olympics.com. Srikanth, who last clinched a BWF badminton title in the 2017 French Open Super Series, raced to a 6-0 lead against his opponent before the latter found his rhythm. The Indian shuttler however kept his calm and headed into the interval with a 11-4 lead, eventually winning the first game.
In the second game, Srikanth took the easy lead of 10-5, but Dubovenko fought back brilliantly to level the scores at 15-15. Srikanth raised his tempo, closing the match on a high and fixing a round of 16 clash against world number 41 Jason Gunawan of Hong Kong.
In other competitions, Sankar Subramanian (men’s singles), Ruban Kumar-Hariharan Amsakarunan (men’s doubles) and Rohan Kapoor-Ruthvika Shivani (mixed doubles) and Rakshitha Ramraj also made it to the round two.
Sankar defeated Cheam Jun Wei of Malaysia 15-21, 21-15, 21-19 in his opening round encounter and his next match will be against Indonesia’s Chico Aura Dwi Wardoyo.
On the other hand, Ruban and Hariharan beat Thailand’s Pannawat Jamtubtim-Ratchapol Makkasasithorn 21-18, 21-12 while Rohan Kapoor-Ruthvika Shivani beat Thailand’s Weeraphat Phakjarung-Sararat Chueboca 21-8, 21-16.
Rakshitha managed to edge past China’s Wu Luo Yu in a well-fought match by 21-19, 21-16 to secure her round of 16 spot.
Among the players who were knocked out of the competition were: Tharun Mannepalli, Satish Kumar, Ayush Shetty and Mithun Manjunath in men’s singles, Tanya Hemanth, Shriyanshi Valishetty and Tara Shah in the women’s singles competition and the Indian men’s doubles pair of Abinash Mohanty-Ayush Pattanayak.
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