Japan Open: Sindhu, Srikanth, Prannoy storm into second round

In women’s singles opening round here on Tuesday, third seed Sindhu prevailed over unseeded local girl Sayaka Takahashi in three games 21-17, 7-21, 21-13. Sindhu will next play Chinese Fangjie Gao, who defeated the other Indian in fray Jakka Vaishnavi Reddy 21-10 21-8. 

In men’s singles, Prannoy defeated current Asian Games gold medalist Jonathan Christie of Indonesia 21-18 21-17 while Srikanth got the better of Chinese Yuxiang Huang 21-13 21-15 in another first-round match. While Prannoy will be up against Anthony Sinisuka Ginting of Indonesia in the second round, Srikanth will take on Vincent Wong Wing Ki of Hong Kong.  

However, it was curtains for another Indian, Sameer Verma, who went down 18-21, 22-20, 10-21 in his first round encounter. Meanwhile, it was a mixed outing for the Indian mixed doubles pairs. While Satwiksairak Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponappa crashed out in the opening round, the combination of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N Sikki Reddy sailed into the next round.

Ranikireddy and Ponappa were shown the door by second seeds Yilyu Wang and Dongping Huang of China 13-21 17-21, while Chopra and Reddy stormed into the second round with a 21-9 21-6 victory over Malaysian duo of Mathew Fogarty and Isabel Zhong. Chopra and Reddy will face another Malaysian combination of Peng Soon Chang and Liu Ying Goh in the next round.