India had a good opening day at the badminton world junior championships in Indonesia, with six out of the eight singles shuttlers in action reaching the third round.
While men’s second seed Lakshya Sen, 13th seed Kartikey Gulshan Kumar, women’s eighth seed Aakarshi Kashyap, and the unseeded Ashmita Chaliha received first-round byes, Rahul Bharadwaj and Gayatri Gopichand came through two rounds on Monday to reach the third.
Sen was up against Mate Balint of Hungary and needed only 17 minutes to dispatch him 21-15, 21-5. Kashyap too barely broke a sweat as she thrashed Egypt’s Hana Hesham Mohamed 21-9, 21-4 in just 15 minutes.
Kumar was also barely tested by Poland’s Tymoteusz Malik 21-7, 21-9, while Chaliha was given a tough fight by Vietnam’s Thi Phuong Thuy Tran before the Indian came through 21-13, 14-21, 21-19.
Bharadwaj cruised past Maldives’ Mohamed Arslaan Ali 21-3, 21-4 in 14 minutes in the first round, before beating Bulgaria’s Alex Popov 21-5, 21-6 in 19 minutes. Gopichand beat Poland’s Wiktoria Dabczynska 21-8, 21-12, before sending South Africa’s Anicka Bestbier packing 21-4, 21-11.
Purva Barve and Aryamann Tandon were the two Indians who stumbled at the first hurdle. Barve battled for 51 minutes against Poland’s Asty Dwi Widyaningrum before losing 21-19, 13-21, 16-21. Tandon was up against sixth seed Kodai Naraoka of Japan and was never really in the match, losing 10-21, 12-21.