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The badminton caravan moves to the Hong Kong Super Series event this week. There is plenty of Indian participation at the event with most of the big names featuring including Saina Nehwal, PV Sindhu, Parupalli Kashyap and the women’s doubles duo of Ashwini Ponnappa and Jwala Gutta.
The tournament is of particular significance to India’s top shuttler Saina Nehwal, who is yet to win a title this season and has been forced to endure a rather disappointing year. She has not made the final either of a single event that she has taken part in.
Her best performance came at the inaugural Indian Badminton League, where she won each of her six matches to guide her Hyderabad Hotshots team to the title. That run included two wins against Indian badminton’s newest star Sindhu, and victories over veterans such as Tine Baun and Juliane Schenk.
But barring that tournament, Saina has struggled at the international level.
Four semi-final appearances remain her best showing of the year, but to go with that she has also suffered as many as three exits at the third-round stage, including last week at the China Open. And with another strong field assembled at Hong Kong, Saina has her task cut out.
Sindhu too has been on a downward trend since that historic bronze medal winning performance at the BWF World Championships earlier this year. The teenager has suffered a series of early round exits, some to players ranked far below her.
At the Japan Open, she lost to unheralded Akane Yamaguchi in Round 2 and followed it up with a first round exit at the Denmark Open. At the French Open, it was another second round appearance where she was usurped by Ji Hyun Sung of Korea.
Both Saina and Sindhu have seen their rankings affected as a result; Saina has dropped to number 7, while Sindhu has stayed at 10 after breaking into the top 10 after her showing at the World Championships.
Saina, winner here in 2010, will start her campaign against World No.30 Bellaetrix Manuputty of Indonesia in the first round on Wednesday while Sindhu has a tough, tough opener against World Champion and current world number 2 Ratchanok Inthanon of Thailand, in what will be a rematch of their semi-final match from the World Championships.
The spotlight will also be on the doubles pairing of Ashwini Ponnappa and Jwala Gutta who have gotten together to play at international level with next year’s Commonwealth Games and Asian Games in mind. In the two tournaments they have played, they have gone out in the first and second round respectively. The duo played at the Bitburger Open in Germany and the French Open Superseries event; they got to round 2 in Germany, but lost in round one in Paris.
The pairing will have to make it through the qualifiers to reach the main draw of the event at Hong Kong this week. They will play Shuk Tin Ip and Sum Yee Yung of Hong Kong for a place in the main draw.
In men’s singles action, up-and-coming player K Srikanth plays world number 1 Lee Chong Wei in the first round while Kashyap opens up against Zhengming Wang of China.
Ajay Jayaram plays world number 7 Tien Minh Nguyen of Vietnam, but will be confident of a good showing after having beaten him during the IBL.
Indian Contingent at the Hong Kong Open
Men’s Singles: Ajay Jayaram, K Srikanth, P Kashyap, Anand Pawar
Women’s Singles: Saina Nehwal, PV Sindhu
Men’s Doubles: Manu Attri/Sumeeth Reddy, Pranav Jerry Chopra/Akshay Dewalkar
Women’s Doubles: Pradnya Gadre/N Siki Reddy, Jwala Gutta/Ashwini Ponnappa,
Mixed Doubles: Tarun Kona/Ashwini Ponnappa, V Diju/N Siki Reddy,
