The Indian women’s doubles pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand continued their journey to make it to the Paris 2024 Olympics, after they made it to the quarters of the German Open Super 300, after beating the Czech pair of Soňa Horinkova and Kateřina Zuzakova on Thursday.
Treesa and Gayatri won in straight games, 21-10 21-11, in the round of 16 match. Now they will be up against the Chinese sixth seeds Jing Yi and Xu Min Luo. Meanwhile, it was an easy victory for the WR-23 pair, who performed exceptionally well at the Badminton Asia Team Championships recently, where India had won their maiden title.
In the first game, the duo took the initial advantage at the mid-game break, with an 11-8 lead. Thereafter, they didn’t have any trouble whatsoever, to wrap up the game. Come the second, the Czech pair couldn’t sustain the pressure, and conceded a 0-4 lead to the Indians. Eventually they lost without putting up much fight.
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Singles Stars Lose
But the Indian shuttlers in the fray, in the singles section, were on their way out. First, it was Aakarshi Kashyap who lost 13-21, 14-21 to thesixth seed Mia Blichfeldt of Denmark, and then it was Sathish Kumar Karunakaran who was ousted by Ireland’s Nhat Nguyen 18-21 22-24 in the men’s singles.
Seasoned Indian shuttlers like PV Sindhu, Kidambi Srikanth, Lakshya Sen, HS Prannoy, & the doubles team of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty had given the tournament a miss.