Commonwealth Games champions Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty will miss the Thailand Open Super 300 badminton tournament. This happened becauseSatwiksairaj failed to fully recover from a recent hip injury.
Satwik was injured during the Indian Open Super 750 tournament earlier this month. He was forced to withdraw midway through the tournament in New Delhi.
“There’s no match against Thailand because it’s not healed yet,” Chirag, half of the world’s sixth-ranked pair, told PTI.
“Our main target now is the All England Championships,” he added.
India’s top duo, who have reached the semi-finals of the Malaysia Open Super 1000. The season opener was scheduled to face Chinese Taipei’s Su Ching Heng and Ye Hong Wei in the opener. The $210,000 tournament has lost some of its lusters as many Indian shuttles, including former No. 1 Saina Nehwal and Malvika Bansod, have also retired from the event. (Read Also: BAI Applies to BWF to host Sudirman cup 2023)
Saina was scheduled to face Denmark’s Mia Brichfeld. Bansod was scheduled to face top seed and former world champion Ratchanok Inthanon.
The duo, Anupama Upadhyaya and Ashmita Chaliha, the only two women in her singles event, will face off in the All-India opener.
In men’s doubles, world No. 34 Krishna Prasad Galaga and Vishnuvardhan Gord Panjara have also opted out, while Ishaan Vatnagar and Sai Prathek K and PS Ravikrishna and Shankar Prasad Udayakumar are currently in contention. However, India will have a large number of players, led by Tokyo Olympic champion B Sai Praneet, who will compete in men’s singles.
On the other hand, former Singapore Open champion 7 Praneeth has fallen to No.1 in the world rankings. Samir Verma, who is also on his way back from injury, meets another Chinese at number 51, Li Si Fung.
Priyanshu Rajawat, who made the peloton at last week’s Indonesian Masters, faces South Korea’s Hao Guan-hee, while Orissa Open winner Kiran George faces Chinese Taipei’s Chia Hao Lee at the Orleans Masters. Runner-up Mithun Manjunath will face No. 5-seeded Japanese Kenta Nishimoto.
In the women’s doubles, the pair of Commonwealth Games bronze medallists Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand will face Japan’s Rena Miyaura and Saiko Sakuramoto, but the new pair of Shruti Mishra and her N Sikki Reddy will be eliminated. Tanisha Kurast and Ashwini Ponnappa take on China’s Tan Ning and Xia Yu Ting, while Simran Singi and Ritika Saker are also in contention.
Also in mixed doubles are B. Smith Reddy and Ashwini Ponnappa, and No. 8 seeds Ishaan Bhatnagar and Tanisha.
