Winning starts for Prannoy, Sourabh at badminton Worlds

In mixed doubles, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy & Ashwini Ponnappa beat Niclas Nohr & Sara Thygesen of Denmark 21-9, 22-20.

Nanjing (China), July 30: H. S. Prannoy and Sameer Verma geared up for bigger battles with straight-game victories as India made a resounding start at the BWF World Championships here today.

World No. 11 Prannoy started his campaign in style beating New Zealand’s Abhinav Manota 21-12, 21-11 while Sameer dumped France’s Lucas Corvee 21-13, 21-10 to progress to the second round.

Prannoy, who had clinched a bronze medal at the Asia Badminton Championship this year, will face Brazils Ygor Coelho, while Swiss Open champion Sameer will have an uphill task of taming the legendary Lin Dan of China, a two-time Olympic gold medallist.

Indian mixed doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa, who had been in good form at the Commonwealth Games, prevailed 21-9, 22-20 over Denmark’s Niclas Nohr and Sara Thygesen.

The world No. 39 Indian combine will next face the German pairing of Mark Lamsfuss and Isabel Herttrich, seeded 15th.

India’s top mixed doubles duo of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N. Sikki Reddy, ranked 22nd, also made a good start defeating Czech Republic’s Jakub Bitman and Alzbeta Basova 21-17, 2115 to set up a clash with the Indonesian combine of Hafiz Faizal and Gloria Emanuelle Widjaja.

Men’s doubles pair of Manu Attri and B. Sumeeth Reddy, who had won the Lagos International recently, defeated Bulgarian pair Daniel Nikolov and Ivan Rusev 21-13, 21-18 to also make it to the second round.

Young Indian mixed doubles pairing of Saurabh Sharma and Anoushka Parikh, and Rohan Kapoor and Kuhoo Garg, also pulled off impressive wins to advance to the second round.

Saurabh and Anoushka defeated Nigerian combo of Enejoh Abah and Peace Orji 21-13, 21-12 while Rohan and Kuhoo, who had finished runners-up at the Russian Open on Sunday, beat Canada’s Toby Ng and Rachel Honderich 21-19, 21-6 in another mixed doubles match. However, Sanyogita Ghorpade and Prajakta Sawant went down fighting 20-22, 14-21 to Turkey’s Bengisu Ercetin and Nazlican Inci in 34 minutes in the women’s doubles competition. — PTI