Sindhu cruises to 2nd round; Satwiksairaj, Chirag forfeit match

PV Sindhu, a top-ranked Indian badminton player, reached the second round of the women’s solo match on Wednesday at the Spain Masters 2023 competition in Madrid.
In a 31-minute match, the two-time Olympian beat Jenjira Stadelmann of Switzerland 21-10, 21-14. PV Sindhu has now defeated Jenjira Stadelmann twice this month, having already upset the European shuttler at the Swiss Open 2023.
“I feel very happy. The conditions were very good today. The shuttle was a bit faster but we need to get used to the conditions. Otherwise, it’s been pretty good. I hope I maintain the same rhythm tomorrow as well,” Olympics.com quoted PV Sindhu as saying.
The Swiss Open 2023 champions, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty retired from the men’s doubles competition seven minutes into their match against the world No. 41 Japanese team of Ayato Endo and Yuta Takei due to Satwiksairaj’s injury.
“I just came back from an injury so I wasn’t 100 per cent fit for the match so I didn’t want to push it. We had a good last week and we played good matches at the All England Open so we didn’t want to push ourselves too much as we have more important tournaments coming up,” Satwiksairaj Rankireddy explained the decision to forfeit the match.
The 18th-ranked women’s doubles pair of Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly lost to Japanese Rena Miyaura and Ayako Sakuramoto 18-21, 16-21.
In the opening match of the men’s singles, Kidambi Srikanth, who dropped to No. 21 in the world rankings, upset Thailand’s Sitthikom Thammasin ranked No. 32 in the world, 21-11, 25-27, 23-21.
In a different men’s singles match, Jan Louda of the Czech Republic, who was ranked 57th, was defeated by B Sai Praneeth. The hour-long match was won by the Indian badminton player 21-16, 18-21, and 21-12.
Aakarshi Kashyap stunned Canada’s world No. 15 Michelle Li 12-21, 21-15, 21-18 while Ashmitha Chaliha beat France’s Leonice Huet 21-12, 22-20 at the BWF Super 300 event.
Malvika Bansod also progressed to the second round of women’s singles while Priyanshu Rajawat and Kiran George also crossed the first-round hurdle in men’s singles.