Indian shuttlers continued to disappoint at the international stage with Lakshya Sen and the star men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty crashing out in the second round of the Indonesia Masters Super 500 badminton tournament in Jakarta on Thursday. Sen, ranked 10th in the world, extended his struggling run on the international circuit with a loss in the men’s singles second round against Japan’s Kenta Nishimoto 16-21 21-12 21-23 in 50 minutes. If that was not enough, Asian Games champions Satwik and Chirag, who reached back-to-back semifinals at Malaysia Super 1000 and India Super 750 in the last two weeks, also exited from the tournament with a hard-fought 20-22 21-23 loss against Thai combination of Kittinupong Kedren and Dechapol Puavaranukroh.
Earlier in the day, the mixed doubles pair of Dhruv Kapila and Tanshia Crasto squandered an early lead to go down 21-18 15-21 19-21 against Malaysia’s Pang Ron Hoo and Su Yin Cheng in the second round.
Sen, an Asian Games silver medallist and Commonwealth Games gold winner, made a poor start to the match as he lost the first game.
The Indian’s famed defence was ably tackled by the lower-ranked Nishimoto as he took a 9-3 lead and never looked back, despite Sen trying to make a comeback at 10-11. But Nishimoto employed fast rallies and closed out the first game comfortably.
Sen made a fast start to the second game and raced to a 6-3 lead with an aggressive smash.
Nishimoto opted for long rallies to tire out Sen but the Indian’s smart strokeplay handed him a 11-6 lead at the break.
Nishimoto then committed plenty of errors at the net as Sen’s retrieving capacity was on full display while he extended his lead to 16-8.
The Japanese was troubled by the drift as Sen picked up points at will to close out the second game at 21-12 and force the match into the decider.
With the change of sides, it was then Sen’s turn to struggle as Nishimoto raced to a 5-1 lead in the decider.
But a calm and composed Sen kept up up with his opponent till 7-7.
Sen took the lead for the first time in the decider with a jump smash but committed errors due to the drift to trail 9-11 at the final break of the tie.
Later in the day, the women’s doubles pair of Crasto and seasoned Ashwini Ponnappa will be up against Malaysian combination of Pei Kee Go and Mei Xing Teoh.
On Wednesday, two-time Olympic medallist PV Sindhu and upcoming men’s singles player Priyanshu Rajawat crashed out in the opening round.
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