Lakshya Sen's woeful run continued as he made a first round exit
Summary of sports events and persons who made news on Wednesday
India's Tokyo Paralympics gold winner Pramod Bhagat was on Thursday named among six shuttlers for the Male Para Badminton Player of the Year by the sport's world body but none of his compatriots featured in the able-bodied awards' categories.
Kiran George wins Indonesia Masters to grab second super 100 title
HS Prannoy had almost given up on winning his next title and breaking a six-year long drought before chief national coach Pullela Gopichand instilled in him the belief.
PV Sindhu still has the hunger to succeed, and the primary aim is to help her regain consistency, says her new coach Anup Sridhar, who has been roped in by the two-time Olympic medallist on a trial basis following the Paris Games.
This was the third title for the Indian duo -- they had clinched the Abu Dhabi Masters Super 100 and Nantes International Challenge this year.
Lakshya Sen said the win against reigning All England Champion Li Shi Feng gives him confidence and belief in the Olympic qualification year.
Parupalli Kashyap advanced to the men's singles quarter-finals at the Korea Open after a hard-earned victory over Malaysia's Daren Liew, in Incheon, on Thursday. The Indian shuttler prevailed 21-17, 11-21, 21-12 in 56 minutes.
World No. 15 Sindhu, who will be eyeing her third Olympic medal at the Paris Games in two months time, will face second seed and world no. 7 Wang Zhi Yi of China in the summit clash.
'I want to take Durga Maa's blessings and achieve a lot more'
India cruised to a 3-0 win over minnows South Africa to progress to the semifinals
The 26-year-old is now the lone Indian survivor in the BWF World Tour Super 750 tournament.
Sen, who had emulated his mentor Prakash Padukone by winning the World championship bronze in Huelva, Spain last month, will now look to claim the All England Championships in March.
The Badminton World Federation (BWF), in a statement, said the escalation of the COVID-19 outbreak globally forced it to cancel or postpone all tournaments from March 16 to April 12.
P V Sindhu has made early exits in as many as seven of the 12 BWF World Tour events this year.
Sindhu, Sen look to regain lost touch in Canada Open
India's top shuttler P V Sindhu is targetting peak form during the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games this year to ensure that she clinches the two titles missing from her cabinet.
India's Lakshya Sen won his second successive BWF World Tour Super 100 title with a thrilling victory over China's Weng Hong Yang in the final of the SaarLorLux Open, in Saarbrucken, Germany, on Sunday.
With five titles under his belt, Lakshya Sen was racing towards the top echelons of international badminton before his stunning run was halted by the coronavirus pandemic, which brought all sporting action to a halt across the world. With the world in lockdown to contain the deadly disease, Lakshya too is enduring the uncertain times within the confines of his apartment, near the Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy (PPBA) in Bengaluru.
The apex body had also announced that ranking points earned at tournaments during the original qualification phase will be maintained.
Both Sen and Srikanth are fighting to be inside the top 16 by April 28 next year to qualify for the Paris Olympics.
Placed at number 10 in the Race to Guanzhou rankings, Srikanth needed to win the tournament to have any hopes of qualifying for the season-ending World Tour Final in December.
After a string of disappointing results, PV Sindhu parted ways with coach Park Tae Sang
I don't want to respond to what her father has to say, if Sindhu says something, I will respond, Gopichand retorts to PV Sindhu's father's allegations of unsatisfactory training.
In the mixed doubles event, Satwiksairak Rankreddy and Ashwini Ponnappa started their campaign on a winning note. The duo beat the German combine of Marvin Seidel and Linda Efler in straight games 21-14, 31-19.
World champion shuttler P V Sindhu on Thursday donated Rs 5 lakh each to the Chief Minister's Relief Funds of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to fight the dreaded COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed over 21,000 lives globally. The number of positive cases in India has surpassed the 600-mark, while 13 deaths have been reported so far, prompting the government to put the country under lockdown till April 14 to halt the spread of the virus.
The Indians, who were also Asian champions, defeated the current world champions in 43 minutes.
HS Prannoy went down fighting to World No 7 Japanese Kodai Naraoka in a thrilling quarter-final at the Malaysia Open Super 750 badminton tournament.
Lakshya Sen, his father and physio reached Bangalore, Dey and Jayaram took a flight from Frankfurt to Delhi.
The star Indian pair of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy will be the key attraction in the men's doubles category. However, they are set to face a stiff competition as the line-up includes the three-time world champion and world No. 2 Indonesian duo of Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan alongside another Indonesian pair of Fajar Alfian and Muhammad Rian Ardianto, who are currently ranked eighth in the world.
In an open letter, BWF secretary general Thomas Lund said the decision to go ahead with the All England Championships was made based on the best advice at that time. "It has been very disappointing to see some members of the badminton community speculate on the sincerity and motives of the BWF in this time of crisis," Lund wrote.
Rejuvenated after a month-long break from a hectic BWF schedule, Sindhu and Srikanth prevailed over Japanese shuttlers Aya Ohori and Kenta Nishimoto in women's and men's singles respectively.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty enjoyed another memorable 'Evening in Paris', lifting the French Open badminton crown for the second time with a dominating straight-game victory over Chinese Taipei's Lee Jhe-Huei and Yang Po-Hsuan in the men's doubles final in Paris on Sunday.
Sindhu does not expect her prolonged pandemic-related absence to hamper her preparations for next year's rescheduled Tokyo Olympics.
Star Indian shuttlers PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth will look to arrest their slump in form when they begin their campaign at the Australia Open badminton tournament in Sydney on Tuesday.
Sindhu hardly had to break a sweat as she posted a comfortable 21-14 21-7 win over the third seeded Japanese shuttler in just 44 minutes.
The Indian men's doubles pairing of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty reclaimed its position in the top 10 of the latest BWF rankings.
'The last five years have been great, it has been a lovely journey. There have been lots of ups and down but I have learnt a lot, experienced a lot, improved a lot.'
Srikanth blew two game points in the second game to lose 7-21, 20-22 to Axelsen in the men's singles summit clash.
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