Badminton

Priyanshu, currently 58th in the world badminton rankings, defeated world No. 12 Kenta Nishimoto 21-8, 21-16 in a 42 minute long second round to seal a place in the last eight of the BWF Super 300 badminton tournament. The Indian started strongly and cruised to a 10-0 lead in the first game.

It was a mixed day for India in the USD 240,000 prize money BWF World Tour Super 300 event as Tanya Hemanth in women's singles and Mithun Manjunath in men's singles reached the second round, while Tasnim Mir, Aakarshi Kashyap (women's singles) and Sameer Verma lost in the first round while Priyanshu Rajawat lost to compatriot Kiran George 21-18, 21-13.

Saina, who has dropped to 31 in the BWF Rankings, is the highest-ranked Indian woman player in the fray as two-time Olympic medallist P.V Sindhu, who lost in the final of the Madrid Masters 2023 on Sunday, has decided to give the event a miss. Men's singles players Lakshya Sen, Kidambi Srikanth and HS Prannoy will also skip the BWF Super 300 tournament.

Sindhu, who had failed to progress beyond the second round in the BWF World Tour events she competed in so far, reached her first final of the 2023 season as she gathered momentum as she had missed the entire second half of the 2022 season after suffering an injury during in Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in August.

Sindhu got into the act after a tight start as she defeated Blichfeldt 21-14, 21-17 in a 40-minute encounter, registering her sixth win against the Danish player. Sindhu, the silver medallist at the 2016 Rio Olympics and bronze medallist in Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021, has recently dropped out of the top 10 in the BWF World Rankings.

Satwik-Chirag, sixth in the badminton rankings, defeated the world No. 21 Chinese pair 21-19, 24-22 to win their first title of the 2023 badminton season. Commonwealth Games champions Satwik and Chirag's previous BWF title came at the French Open 2022 BWF Super 750 tournament in October.

Satwik-Chirag, sixth in the badminton rankings for men's doubles, defeated the world No. 8 Malaysian pair 21-19, 17-21, 21-17 in the semi-finals of the BWF Super 300 tournament. In the final on Sunday, the Indian pair will play world No. 21 Chinese pair of Tan Qiang and Ren Xiang Yu for their first title of the 2023 season.

Mithun Manjunath too went out at the pre-quarterfinal stage, thus leaving the men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, the second seeds, remaining in the fray. Sindhu, the defending champion, lost to Indonesia's Putri Kusuma Wardani 21-15, 12-21, 21-18 in a hard-fought Round of 16 encounter.

Gayatri and Treesa, who reached the semi-finals at All England Open in Birmingham last week, lost 14-21, 14-21 to second seeds Apriyani Rahayu and Siti Fadia Silva Ramadhanti of Indonesia on Tuesday. On the other hand, Malvika Bansod beat USA's Lauren Lam 21-17, 21-7 in the women's singles qualifiers to advance to the main draw.

Ahead of Saturday's match, Yamaguchi dominated the head-to-head as the two-time world champion had won 17 out of 26 encounters against Chen. In their recent clash, Yamaguchi defeated Chen in straight games in the semifinals at last week's German Open. But Chen pushed herself forward this time at the Birmingham.