File image of Lakshya Sen© AFP
Commonwealth Games champion Lakshya Sen will face teammate Kidambi Srikanth in the men’s singles opening round match of the French Open badminton tournament in Paris on Tuesday. With the top two Indians in the world rankings ranked eighth and 11th respectively, Sen and Srikanth will clash for the second time in their careers. Sen was the best Indian player at the recently concluded Denmark Open, but lost to Japan’s Kodai Naroka in the quarterfinals.
In his earlier match-up, Srikanth had defeated Sen in a tight match on his way to a historic silver at the 2021 World Championships.
The winner between the two Indians is likely to clash with world number two Anders Antonsen of Denmark in the next round of the World Tour 750 event.
HS Prannoy, who has been the most consistent player in recent times, has an easy first round performance against Malaysia’s Darren Lew, against whom the Indian has a 7-4 one-on-one record.
World No. 13 Prannoy clashed with Sen in the second round of the Denmark Open. This time, if he gets past the first hurdle, he has a potentially bigger challenge in the subsequent rounds in fifth seed Kento Momota and fourth seed Chou Tien Chen.
Prannoy ended a seven-match losing streak against Japanese world No. 9 Momota at the 2022 World Championships and would like to continue his winning momentum.
Olympic bronze medalist Saina Nehwal will take on Germany’s Yvonne Lee in her women’s singles opening round. Saina defeated German in their only meeting held in 2020.
Commonwealth Games gold medalist men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty are the only seeds (7th) Indians and find themselves in the same quarter as top seeded pair of Takuro Hoki and Yuo Kobayashi of Japan.
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In the other Indian doubles pairing, MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila will take on fifth seeds Fajar Alfian and Muhammad Riyan Ardiento of Indonesia.
Tresa Jolly-Gayatri Gopichand and Ishaan Bhatnagar-Tanisha Krasto are also in the fray in women’s doubles and mixed doubles respectively.
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