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Badminton

All England Open 2022: Lakshya Sen loses to Viktor Axelsen; finishes as runner-up

Lakshya Sen went down 10-21, 15-21 to World Number 1 Viktor Axelsen in 53 minutes at the All England Open 2022 and has bagged the silver medal.

Lakshya Sen All England
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Lakshya Sen (Source: Getty Images)

By

The Bridge Desk

Updated: 20 March 2022 6:30 PM GMT

The young Indian shuttler, Lakshya Sen, failed to repeat the heroics of his master Prakash Padukone as he went down 10-21, 15-21 to World Number 1 Viktor Axelsen in the men's singles final of the All England Badminton Open 2022.

Playing his third All England, the 20-year-old Sen seemed to be way off his best as the Dane steamrolled him in 53 minutes and exacted revenge for suffering a loss to Lakshya last week at the German Open.

The jitters of playing his first major final seemed to have thrown Lakshya off his game as the youngster went down 0-6 in no time with some very long rallies going in favour of his opponent. The Indian never recovered from that horrible start as Axelsen led 11-2 and then pocketed the first game 21-10 in 22 minutes.

The trend continued in the second game as well as Axelsen raced to a 4-1 lead, winning some hard-fought long rallies but Lakshya fought back well to equalise at 4-4. The top seed, however, soon upped the game as he went into the mid-game break with a massive 11-5 advantage.

Lakshya did put up a mini-fightback post that break reducing the deficit to 8-12, but Axelsen brought out all the tricks from his sleeves to force the Indian to play the catch up for remaining part of the match.

Lakshya Sen was the first Indian man to reach the final of All England Open since Pullela Gopichand in 2001. He is now the third Indian man to have lost the All England final after Prakash Nath in 1947 and his own coach Prakash Padukone, who lost in 1981 while trying to defend his crown.

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