India's Lakshya Sen got past his compatriot HS Prannoy rather comfortably to seal his place in the quarter-finals in the men's singles badminton event at the Paris Olympics 2024. Sen won 21-12, 21-6 in straight sets in a match that lasted 39 minutes to become only the second Indian player in badminton men's singles to reach the quarters stage at the Olympic Games after Parupalli Kashyap in London in 2012.
Sen expectedly began with points before a service error opened Prannoy's scoring. Prannoy pulled in a couple of points here and there, forcing Sen to err but the 22-year-old was largely unshakeable. After a few errors at the start of the first set, Sen came back nicely to take a 7-point lead before winning the set with a nine-point lead.
Prannoy just didn't turn up in the second set as Lakshya blew him away to win the second set with a 15-point lead. Prannoy was just struggling, especially in the latter stages of the game as Sen was just too good for his Indian counterpart. The second set lasted just 18 minutes as Sen completed a magnificent fourth win in straight sets at the ongoing Olympics.
Sen will now take on Chinese Taipei's Chen Chou in the quarter-finals, who beat Japan's Kodai Naraoka in straight sets 21-12, 21-16.
Lakshya will hope to keep India's medal hopes intact in badminton after the much-decorated pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty faltered at the quarter-final stage in men's doubles against the Malaysian pair of Aaron Chia and Wooi Yik Soh. The duo had won the first set largely untroubled 21-13 before the Malaysian duo came back to hurt India's biggest medal hope to win the last two sets 21-14 and 21-16.
Later in the day, PV Sindhu will be in action against China’s He Binj Jiao in the women’s singles round of 16.
