Huelva (Spain): Defending champion PV Sindhu breezed past Slovakia’s Martina Repiska 21-7, 21-9 to make a resounding start in the BWF World Championship here Tuesday. The fast-rising Lakshya Sen prevailed over 15th seeded Japanese Kenta Nishimoto 22-20, 15-21, 21-18 to progress to the pre-quarterfinals along with Kidambi Srikanth who rallied to defeat Chinese Li Shi Feng 15-21, 21-18, 21-17. The 12th seeded Indian’s match lasted 69 minutes.
In men’s doubles, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty beat Chinese Taipei’s Lee Jhe-Huei and Yang Po-Hsuan 27-25, 21-17 in 43 minutes.
World No.7 Sindhu took just 24 minutes to beat the unseeded at opponent court number 3 of Palacio de los Deportes Carolina Marín Stadium here. Sindhu has won the tournament in 2019 and is seeded sixth here. The two-time Olympic-medallist began on a rousing note and raced to a 4-1 lead with her fine play.
Repiska tried to make a comeback with two points, but the fancied Indian did not allow her to do so. Sindhu led 11-4 at the mid-break. She continued her dominance and kept accumulating points to widen the lead, eventually pocketing the first game in only 10 minutes.
The script remained the same in the second game as well, with Sindhu maintaining her firm grip over the proceedings to race to a 6-0 lead in just two minutes.
At the interval, Sindhu was leading 11-1 and she completed the formality with a dominant performance.
Sen was made to toil hard for his victory by the Japanese as he took 82 minutes to emerge winner.
However, the mixed doubles pairing of Saurabh Sharma and Anoushka Parikh suffered a straight game defeat to Malaysians Tan Kian Meng and Lai Pei Jing, going down 21-8, 21-18.
