Badminton News: Indian badminton players had a disappointing start to the opening day of the Taiwan Open Super BWF World Tour Super 300 Tournament held at Tian-mu Arena, Taipei University, Taiwan.

With the absence of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, India’s top-ranked pair, eighth seeds Krishna Prasad and Vishnuvardhan Goud were eliminated early in the tournament.

They faced Vinson Chiu and Joshua Yuan of the United States in the first round. After losing early in the game, the Indian players managed to get back up and equalize. However, they couldn’t maintain their momentum in the deciding match, losing 18-21, 22-20, 16-21 after a battle that lasted 54 minutes.

Panda sisters Rutaparna and Swetaparna, who were India’s top-ranked in the women’s doubles table, lost to lower-ranked local challengers Cheng Yu-Pei and Sun Wen Pei 7-21, 30-28, 12- 21.

Down 12-17 in Game 2, the Panda Brothers won five straight to bounce back and put together some good rallies to settle things at 30-28. But Cheng and Sun came back strong in the deciding match and extended their 13-9 lead to win the game in 58 minutes.

India’s top women’s doubles duo Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand have missed out on the Super 300 tournament.

Veteran Saina Nehwal, who is India’s top ranked in the women’s singles table, has retired along with young Malvika Bansod.

Men’s singles seed Kodai Naraoka also withdrew and was replaced by Parupalli Kashyap.

The 2014 Commonwealth Games gold medalist begins her competition against qualifier Samuel Hsiao of Germany on Wednesday.

World number 9 and in-form HS Prannoy, who was knocked out in the Indonesia Open Super 1000 semi-finals last week, is seeded third at Taiwan Open 2023 and will face qualifier Lin Yu Hsien at home .

Article Tags: Taiwan Open 2023, Krishna Prasad, HS Prannoy