French Open: Satwiksairaj-Chirag, Lakshya, Jolly-Gopichand move to round two

PARIS: The star Indian men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty moved to the round of 16 at the ongoing French Open badminton tournament after defeating Malaysia's Ong Yew Sin and Teo Ee Yi in Paris on Tuesday. Satwik and Chirag, the top-ranked men's doubles duo, won the match by 21-13, 24-22. This is their fourth win against Ong and Teo in eight matches.

'Sat-Chi', as the popular Indian pair is known, dominated the first game and were leading the second one at 17-10 at one point. But the Malaysian duo fought back, levelling the scores at 20-all, before India snatched out the winning points. Now in their pre-quarters match-up, the 2022 French Open champions will be locking horns with another Malaysian pair, Man Wei Chong and Tee Kai Wun.

The matches are being played at the Arena Porte de la Chapelle, which will be also the venue of badminton matches during the Paris 2024 Olympics this year. Following the match, Satwik said as quoted by Olympics.com, "We always loved playing at the French Open. We always play well here in Paris. The atmosphere is really great and this is one of the best stadiums to play."

"We played at the Tokyo Olympics as well and nothing beats the experience of playing at the Olympics. We are really looking forward to Paris 2024," he added. The ongoing Badminton World Federation (BWF) Super 750 tournament is also a test event for the Olympics. In the women's doubles first round as well, India had a fine start as the duo of Teresa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand registered a remarkable come-from-behind win over compatriots Tanisha Castro and Ashwini Ponnappa 21-16, 19-21, 17-21. Jolly-Gopichand have confirmed their pre-quarters match against Japan's Yuki Fukushima and Sayaka Hirota in the next round.

Coming to the men's singles competition, the Commonwealth Games champion Lakshya Sen also registered a comeback win by 15-21, 21-15, 21-3 in 63 minutes over Japan's Kanta Tsuneyama, demolishing the shuttler in the third game to seal his second-round clash against China's Li Shifeng, who is also the current All-England champion. Priyanshu Rajawat was drawn against the world number one and Olympic champion Viktor Axelsen and lost to him by 21-8, 21-15. On Wednesday, two-time Olympic medalist PV Sindhu will start off her campaign and Kidambi Srikanth will also be playing.