Badminton, Asia C’Ships: Sindhu, Satwik-Chirag to lead Indian challenge in China

Indian men’s singles shuttler Lakshya Sen will face top seed Shi Yu Qi from China in the opening round of the 2024 Badminton Asia Championships.

The draw for the tournament, scheduled to be held between April 9 and April 14 in Ningbo, China, was revealed on the BWF website on Wednesday.

Alongside Sen, the men’s singles event will feature seventh seed HS Prannoy, Priyanshu Rajawat and Kidambi Srikanth. While Sen had reached the semi-final of the All England Open two weeks prior, Srikanth reached his first BWF Tour semi-final since 2022 at the Swiss Open last week.

Prannoy, who has suffered four first round exits in five World Tour events this year, will take on Lu Guang Zu while Rajawat will face off against eighth seed Lee Zii Jia in the opening round.

Srikanth will also have a tough challenge as he will come up against second seed Anthony Sinisuka Ginting of Indonesia, the latter having finished runners-up at the 2024 All England Open.

PV Sindhu and Aakarshi Kashyap will feature in the women’s singles main draw where Sindhu is drawn to take on Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in the opening round. Kashyap, meanwhile, will face Thailand’s Busanan Ongbamrungphan and could face top seed An Se Young in the Round of 16, should she win her opening round match.

The top-seeded men’s doubles duo of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty will play the Chinese Taipei pair of Lee Jhe-Huei and Yang Po-Hsuan in the opening round. Two other Indian pairs, Dhruv Kapila-M.R.Arjun and Krishna Prasad Garaga-Sai Pratheek, will also feature in the main draw.

In women’s doubles, Tanisha Crasto and Ashwini Ponnappa will open their campaign against the Indonesian pair of Febriana Dwipuji Kusuma and Amallia Cahaya Pratiwi. The other Indian pair in the mix, Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand will begin their campaign against fourth seeds Liu Sheng Shu and Tan Ning from China.

Ashmita Chaliha and Malvika Bansod are the top two ranked shuttlers in the women’s singles qualifying draw. The men’s doubles pair of Hariharan Amsakarunan-Ruban Kumar Rethinasabapathi and the women’s doubles pair of Rutaparna and Swetaparna Panda are also the top ranked teams in their respective qualifying draws.