JOIN USIt was a mixed day for the Indian shuttlers at the Malaysia Grand Prix Gold badminton tournament as RMV Guru Sai Dutt, K Srikanth and Sameer Verma won their respective first round matches while the others crashed out of the men’s singles event in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday.
The 11th seeded Guru Sai Dutt prevailed over Chao Huang of Singapore 21-19, 14-21, 21-17.
Sameer got the better of Wei Jian Ai of Malaysia 21-10, 21-9 to enter the second round, while Srikanth outplayed Sung Min Park of Korea 21-13, 21-11. However, the other Indians in the fray — Oscar Bansal and Abhimanyu Singh — failed to cross the first-round hurdle.
Bansal fought hard before going down to Beryno Jiann Tze Wong of Malaysia 21-7, 16-21, 15-21 in 36 minutes, while Abhimanyu handed Hong Kong’s Yan Kit Chan a walkover in the first round.
Earlier, HS Prannoy had got a walkover in the opening round after Tommy Sugiarto withdrew from the competition. Prannoy will face local lad Iskandar Zulkarnain Zainuddin on Wednesday. Meanwhile, none of the Indians who were in the qualification round, could make it to the main draw.
While Rituparna Das went down to Aya Ohori of Japan 22-20, 7-21, 21-23 in a hard-fought 53-minute match, Ruthvika Shivani G lost to Japan’s Ayumi Mine in 34 minutes in the women’s singles qualifying.
In the men’s doubles qualification match, the Indian pair of Guru Prasad and Vineeth Manuel were beaten by Malaysian duo of Mohd Razif Abdul Latif and Muhammad Hafiz Hashim 7-21 12-21 in just 14 minutes.