Four Indian shuttlers – two each from the men’s and women’s singles – were among the eight qualifiers who made it to the main draw of the India Open World Tour Super 500 tournament, earlier known as the India Open Superseries, on Tuesday.
In the women’s singles draw, junior national champion Aakarshi Kashyap and Tata Open finalist Riya Mukherjee came through the qualifying round. On the men’s side, it was Turkey International Junior Open Kartikey Gulshan Kumar and Shreyansh Jaiswal, who both had to win two qualifiers to progress.
The 16-year-old Kashyap beat Vrushali Gummadi 21-17, 18-21, 21-15, while Mukherjee beat Ira Sharma for the second successive time in the last two months, in straight games 21-11, 21-15.
Kumar came through two tough qualifying matches, both going into three games, against former junior world No 1 Siril Verma and Iceland International finalist Bodhit Joshi. Jaiswal had an easier time, beating Karan Rajan Rajarajan and Abhishek Yelegar in straight games.
In the men’s doubles, where seven out of eight contesting pairs in the qualifiers were Indian, four made it to the main draw: Tushar Sharma and Chandrabhusan Tripathi, Krishna Prasad Garaga and Dhruv Kapila, Francis Alwin and K Nandagopal, and Rohan Kapoor and Shivam Sharma.
In the women’s doubles, two Indians pairs came through: Shenan Christian and Riya Gajjar, and Rutuparna Panda and Mithula UK.
In the mixed doubles qualifiers, where all eight contesting pairs were Indian, the following progressed to the main draw: Raju Mohamed Rehan and J Anees Kowsar, Siddharth and Jagriti Nashier, Shivam Sharma and Poorvisha S Ram, and Vignesh Devlekar and Harika Veludurthi.