Lakshya Sen, the men’s singles winner from the Commonwealth Games, will play against Kidambi Srikanth at the French Open badminton competition on Tuesday. Sen and Srikkanth, the top two Indians in the global rankings at eighth and eleventh, will compete for the second time in their careers. Sen was the top Indian competitor in the just-finished Denmark Open; however, in the quarterfinals, he fell to Japan’s poorly rated Kodai Naraoka.
Sen and Srikkanth had previously faced off, with Srikkanth winning a hard-fought battle to take home a historic silver in the 2021 World Championships.
The winner of the two Indians will probably compete against Denmark’s world No. 2 Anders Antonsen in the following round of the World Tour 750 event.
The most reliable player in recent memory, HS Prannoy, has an easy first-round matchup against Malaysian Daren Liew, with whom the Indian has a 7-4 head-to-head record.
Sen unluckily confronted world number 13 Prannoy in the second round of the Denmark Open. If he advances through the opening round, he will face the fifth-seeded Kento Momota and the fourth-seeded Chou Tien Chen.
At the 2022 World Championships, Prannoy defeated Momota of Japan to snap a seven-match losing run, and he would like to keep up his winning ways.
Saina Nehwal, who won bronze in the Olympics, will play German Yvonne Li in the first round of the women’s singles competition. Saina beat the Germans in their lone encounter in 2020.
The sole ranked Indian pair in the competition, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, who won the men’s doubles gold medal at the Commonwealth Games, are placed in the same quarter as Takuro Hoki and Yuo Kobayashi of Japan, who are the top seeds.
The fifth-seeded Indonesian team of Fajar Alfian and Muhammad Rian Ardianto will face the other Indian doubles team in the competition, MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila.
The women’s doubles team Treesa Jolly-Gayatri Gopichand and the mixed doubles team Ishaan Bhatnagar-Tanisha Crasto are also competing.
