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The 2024 edition of the All England Open Badminton Championships got underway on Tuesday, March 12, in Birmingham, England. The Indian contingent for the event suffered two immediate setbacks as both Kidambi Srikanth and HS Prannoy were eliminated in the very first round.
India suffered a jolt in the women’s doubles also, as the pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand lost their first-round match against Indonesia’s Apriyani Rahayu and Siti Fadia Silva Ramadhanti.
There was some good news, though, as PV Sindhu got past her first-round opponent by playing just one game. Yvonne Li of Germany had to retire after losing to the former World Champion from India on the opening day of the contest.
India’s leading medal contenders, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty will begin their campaign on Wednesday. So will the country’s last medalist at the event – Lakshya Sen, who won the silver medal in 2022.
Let’s look at the prospects of Indian players in the ongoing prestigious tournament and their possible opponents in the coming rounds.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty
The No. 1 ranked men’s doubles pair in the world, Satwik-Chirag will face a very tough challenge in the opening round. They will be up against the legendary pair of Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan on Wednesday.
The Indonesian duo are three-time World Champions and runners-up from last year’s All England Open. In fact, these two have made the finals of the last two editions of this tournament but fell short on both occasions.
Their ranking has fallen sharply in the World Tour standings due to poor results last year and their place in the world rankings has also been deceptively low. However, they seem to reserve their best for the All England Open. So, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty will be tested to the hilt in their very first clash.
If they do get past the pair of Ahsan-Setiawan, they will be up against another Indonesian pair – Bagas Maulana and Muhammad Shohibul Fikri. The worry for the Indian staff would be that even if the Indian pair gets through the Indonesian challenge, they might be worn out before the latter stages of the tournament.
The challenge may, in fact, get easier in the latter rounds as the Chinese pair of Liang Wei Keng and Wang Chang are the second seeds. They failed to make it past the round of 16 in the French Open last week.
PV Sindhu
PV Sindhu also has a very tough draw lined up for her. She may have got past Yvonne Li without straining much, but in the next round, she could face the toughest-possible opponent – An Se Young.
The South Korean player has been in red-hot form and won the French Open last week. She would be up against Chinese Taipei’s Wen Chi Hsu and is expected to win easily.
If Sindhu manages to get past An Se Young, she will have a seemingly easier challenge in the third round – the winner of the match between Han Yue of China and Pai Yu Po of Taipei.
In the semis, she could come up against Akane Yamaguchi of Japan. The two-time former World Champion is one of the best players in the circuit. However, she has been inconsistent this year. The major height difference between her and Sindhu also makes the latter more potent against the Japanese star.
When PV Sindhu won the World Championship in 2019, her toughest match was in the quarter-final. In this event, it might be the second-round clash.
Lakshya Sen
The men’s singles category is the most volatile in badminton currently. Hence, its hard to judge which player is likely to pose a tough challenge and who is easy to beat.
For Lakshya Sen, Magnus Johannesen is the first-round opponent this year. The shuttler from Uttarakhand would fancy an easy win against the Danish player.
In the second round, if he gets there, things become a little more interesting. He will either face Kanta Tsuneyama or Anders Antonsen. The latter looks like a more threatening player on paper, but the Japanese Tsuneyama won’t be an easy opponent either.
In the following round, Lakshya could be up against the former World Champion Loh Kean Yew. But that isn’t going to worry him too much as the Singaporean is no longer a fancied player.
It could get much tougher in the semi-final, if he makes it there, as Lakshya might have to face Shi Yu Qi, who is coming off a win in the French Open. World Champion Kulavut Vitidsarn is also in the reckoning for a spot in the semis. It was Vitidsarn who defeated the Indian shuttler last week.
So, Lakshya will have to run the gauntlet to get close to a medal. But, having shown some form last week and making it to the semis, he will be up for the challenge.
