PARIS: On Wednesday, India’s best badminton players had a great day at the BWF World Championships, with several of them making it to the pre-quarterfinals.
PV Sindhu, who has won two Olympic medals, showed her strength again by beating Malaysia’s world No. 40, Letshanaa Karupathevan, even though she started out slow. The former world champion, who also had a tough first-round match, was down 12-18 in the first game but made an amazing comeback to win 21-19, 21-15 in a 42-minute match. Sindhu will now play against Wang Zhi Yi, the second seed from China, in the pre-quarterfinals. She has a 2-2 record against Wang Zhi Yi.
The ninth-seeded men’s doubles team from India, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, put up a great show. In the opening game, they had to fight off a late attack from Yang Po Han and Liu Kuang Heng of Chinese Taipei, but they won 22-20, 21-13. They will play China’s sixth seeds, Liang Wei Keng and Wang Chang, in the pre-quarterfinals after winning.
In the mixed doubles, the good news for India kept coming. The 16th-seeded pair of Dhruv Kapila and Tanisha Crasto beat Ireland’s Joshua Magee and Moya Ryan 21-11, 21-16 to move on to the Round of 16. Now they have to beat the fifth-seeded team from Hong Kong, Tang Chun Man and Tse Ying Suet, to go to the quarterfinals.
Sindhu and the doubles teams won, while HS Prannoy, another Indian hope, still has to play his men’s singles Round of 32 match against Denmark’s world No. 2 Anders Antonsen. After Lakshya Sen’s early exit, Prannoy is the last Indian left in the men’s singles draw. He won a bronze medal in 2023.
The Indian team at the World Championships in Paris had a good day when Sindhu, Satwik-Chirag, and Dhruv-Tanisha all won. This sets up more thrilling matches as the competition goes on.