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BWF World Championships – Team India Preview

By: Editor
Date: 17 Aug, 2019
Image Courtesy: Scroll.in
We are just about a weekend away from the BWF World Badminton Championships, and the finest badminton players from across the world has descended upon Basel in Switzerland for the showpiece event. The Indian team has a strong contingent and despite some injury setbacks will look to make its mark in the premier badminton tournament of the year.

Looking at the draw, in the men’s singles HS Pranoy, is in the top half of the draw – he opens his campaign against Finnish challenger Eethu Heino. Pranoy, however, has possibly the toughest of the draws on hand with Lin Dan, and Kento Momota being his likely opponents even before we hit the quarterfinals stage.

B. Sai Praneeth is also in the top half of the draw, with Canadian Jason Anthony Ho-Shue his opening round opponent, with a possible second round clash against Lee Dong Keun of South Korea. Anthony Sinsuka Ginting, Tommy Sugiarto and Brice Leverdez are some of the others he might run into before the business end of the tournament.

Srikanth Kidambi, seeded number 7, and Sameer Verma, seeded number 10 – are the two Indians in the bottom half of the draw. Sameer, arguably, has the toughest of the opening round matchups to encounter with Loh Kean Yew being his opponent. Loh Kean, recently made it to the finals of the Hyderabad Open Super 100, before being edged out in the finals by Sameer’s brother – Sourabh Verma.

Srikanth Kidambi opens his campaign against Nhat Nguyen and could possibly run into Mark Caljouw in the third round, and then a possible all-India quarterfinal awaits – should both Sameer & Srikanth win their respective matches until the third round.

PV Sindhu & Saina Nehwal both have an opening round bye in the Women’s Singles’ and both are placed in the bottom half of the draw. This means, should they win all their matches then an exciting all-Hyderabadi semi-final could be a reality in Basel. But then before that Sindhu will have to overcome Beiwen Zhang in the third round and have a possible showdown with Tai Tzu Ying in the quarterfinals. 

Saina Nehwal, meanwhile is likely to face Mia Blichfeldt in the third round and a possible quarterfinal against Chinese fourth seed Chen Yu Fei awaits the 2012 Olympic Silver Medalist.

In the doubles action, the Indian team will be slightly underrepresented with Satwik Sairaj, Chirag Shetty and Pranav Jerry Chopra – all pulling out due to injuries. Mixed doubles is the event worst hit, as India no longer have any contenders with both Ashwini/Satwik and Pranav/Sikki – unlikely to feature.

Manu Attri/Sumeeth Reddy, MR Arjun/Shlok Ramachandran, Arun George/Sanyam Shukla are the three Indian teams to feature in the main draw. The fact that all three of them in the same half of the draw, we are likely to see an all-India clash mid-way through the tournament.

In the women’s doubles action, Sikki Reddy/Ashwini Ponnappa will headline India’s challenge. While Meghana Jakkampudi/Poorvisha Ram & Sanjana Santosh/Pooja Dandu will also like to leave their imprints on the world stage.

Overall, the draw isn’t really the best of friends with the Indian team at this year’s world championships – although it’s unlikely that you will get any easy games at any world championships.

All the action kicks-off in the next 48-hours! Buckle-up folks, this could get pretty edgy!!

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