Badminton, French Open Super 750: Kidambi Srikanth, Lakshya Sen exit in opening round

Indian shuttlers Kidambi Srikanth and Lakshya Sen both lost their opening round matches to exit the French Open Super 750 on Wednesday. This means that the Indian challenge in the men’s singles event ends with HS Prannoy, the highest ranked Indian, having already pulled out of the tournament.

PV Sindhu in women’s singles and the world No 1 pairing of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty are now the only Indians left in the tournament in Rennes after the duo of Rutaparna Panda and Swetaparna Panda also lost their opening encounter on Tuesday.

Having led the head-to-head record 3-1, Srikanth kept abreast of his French opponent Toma Junior Popov through the first few points of the opening game. Both players continued to exchange the lead, not letting the other run away with the game, with Srikanth leading 11-8 at the break.

However, Popov was able to go on a streak of winning four consecutive points that saw him wrest the lead from the Indian at 14-12. The Frenchman then continued to dominate the game and would go on two more streaks of consecutive points won to close out the opening game 21-17.

The second game began in a similar fashion to the first with both players exchanging...

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