India Open: Satwik/Chirag clinches first round, Kidambi loses out

Delhi: Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty won the first-round clash against Fang-Chih Lee and Fang-Jen Lee of Chinese Taipei in a 78-minute long match and sealed their spot in the second round of the India Open Super 750 tournament on Wednesday.

The world no.2 took the match to three games after dropping the second game 19-21, despite making a superb comeback from 14-19 to 18-19.

But, they quickly regained momentum and took the match (21-15, 19-21, 21-16) in the third set.

The Indian pair will face the match winner between the Ben Lane & Sean Vendy English duo and another Chinese Taipei pair of Lu Ching Yao/ Yang Po Han.

The other Indian men's doubles pair of Krishnaprasad Garaga and Sai Pratheek loses out the straight game (14-21, 11-21) encounter against Japan's Kenya Mitsuhashi and Hiroki Okamura.

In men's singles, Kidambi Srikanth suffered a straight-game (22-24, 13-21) defeat to Lee Cheuk of Hong Kong despite having a big lead in the first game. He was leading 17-14 in the first game but then gave 6 straight points to Lee Cheuk Yiu after making many errors.

He retrieved back three points to take the game to the deuce but ended in the end losing the game 22-24. The second game was much simpler as he gave a big lead from the start which he was not able to recover and suffered a first-round exit.

Another men's singles player, Sathish Kumar Karunakaran also loses out after a straight-game affair (16-21, 20-22) to Takuma Obayashi of Japan.

Tanisha Crasto and Ashwini Ponnappa lost out to Jongkolphan Kititharakul & Rawinda Prajonjai of Thailand in a close three-game match whereas Ashwini Bhat and Shikha Gautam ended the campaign in the women's doubles category after their loss to Korean pair of Kim Soyeong and Kong Heeyong.

In women's singles, Aakarshi Kashyap was the lone compatriot for India but lost her match to the Olympic champion Chen Yufei of China.