BWF World Championships: Lakshya Sen advances to pre-quarters; Srikanth loses in second round

In the BWF World Championships, reigning Commonwealth champion Lakshya Sen advanced with a straight-game win over Spain's Luis Penalver. On the other hand, last edition's runner-up Kidambi Srikanth suffered a straight game defeat to world number 32 Zhao Jun Peng.

The young Indian badminton ace Sen won his second round contest 21-17 21-10 in a 72 minutes match.

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After trailing 3-4, the ninth-seeded Sen grabbed a six-point lead to be 13-7. The Indian continued to stay ahead before comfortably wrapping up the first game.

Sen then maintained his lead over the Spanish shuttler and won the second game by a bigger margin.

In the second game, the first six points were shared between the two players, but the 21-year-old Indian pulled ahead riding on his superior play.

Enjoying a massive nine-point lead at one stage of the second game, it was only a matter of time before Sen completed the job.

The 34 minutes match between Kidambi and his Chinese counterpart ended with 18-21, 17-21.

The 29-year-old was out of sorts in the opening game as it took only 12 minutes for Zhao to take a 1-0 lead in the match.

The Indian, already on the back foot, tried to up the ante in the second game and led 16-14 but too many unforced errors helped Zhao secure the victory.

In other matches, the Indian men's doubles duo of M R Arjun and Dhruv Kapila sailed to the pre-quarterfinals but Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy made a second-round exit from the tournament.

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The unseeded Arjun and Kapila upstaged eighth seeds and last edition's bronze medallists Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen of Denmark 21-17 21-16 in their second-round match.

They will face Hee Yong Kai Terry and Loh Kean Hean of Singapore next.
Ponnappa and Sikki, on the other hand, were handed a 21-15 21-10 loss by top seeds Chen Qing Chen and Jia Yi Fan of China in 42 minutes.

The other women's doubles pairing of Pooja Dandu and Sanjana Santosh's also made their way out of the tournament, by losing to Lee So Hee and Shin Seung Chan of Korea 15-21 7-21.

(Inputs from PTI)