Indian badminton stars returned to top-flight international action with the Denmark Open which started Tuesday. Lakshya Sen, HS Prannoy, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty were back on the court while, PV Sindhu, who sustained an injury at the Commonwealth Games in July, will be missing.
In their 5th match against each other this year, Lakshya Sen, the top 8th badminton player in the world, registered a 21-9, 21-18 victory over compatriot H.S. Prannoy, to gain back the lead in their H2H (3-2). With this, he entered the quarterfinals of the Denmark Open Super 750 in Odense here on Thursday. The match lasted for 39 minutes.
With this clean win, Lakshya Sen took a 3-2 head-to-head lead over Prannoy, who defeated the former in the BWF World Championships and Indonesia Open. Earlier, Kidambi Srikanth made a second-round exit after suffering a straight-game loss to Loh Kean Yew. Although Srikanth led the first game for a few initial points, Loh bounced back to win the first game 21-13. With this win, Loh Kean Yew took a 2-1 head-to-head lead over Srikanth and sealed his place in the quarterfinals. The match lasted for 35 minutes.
