Indian shuttler Lakshya Sen fought hard before going down to top seed Kento Momota of Japan, while Parupalli Kashyap suffered a disappointing 11-21, 14-21 defeat against Singapore’s Loh Kean Yew in the opening round of the Indonesia Open Super 1000 event in Bali on Tuesday.
Kashyap was struggling in the entire game and stumbled to a straight-game loss. However, Sen tried hard to overcome the world’s number one challenge, eventually failed and lost the match.
Sen took four points on the trot to regain the lead in the second game when the score was 8-5. But Momota came back with a flurry of points and managed to win the match, 23-21, 21-15, at last.
The Badminton Federation of India later applauded the efforts of Sen on Twitter, “@lakshya_sen put up a brave fight to make top seed, WR- 1 Japanese Kento Momota work hard for each point before going down 21-23, 15-21 in the R32 at #IndonesiaOpen2021. Chin up champ, keep up the good work.”
The men’s doubles pair of MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila also bowed out of the tournament as South Korea’s duo of Choi SoI Gyu and Kim Won Ho defeated Indian pair 22-20, 21-13.
Venkat Gaurav Prasad and Juhi Dewangan, too, had a dismal day as they went down 12-21 4-21 to Germany pair of Jones Ralfy Jansen and Linda Efler.
