Badminton action kicks off this week as the 2020 Malaysia Masters gets underway in Kuala Lumpur from 7th January. The Super 500 tournament will go on till the 12th of January and is the first professional tournament on the 2020 BWF World Tour. The tournament will see the top badminton players in the world in action to start off the year.
India's PV Sindhu will be participating in the tournament, hoping to get back to winning titles after a rather poor show in 2019. She won the World Championship title last year but saw early exits in other tournaments and also failed to defend her World Tour Finals titles, exiting in the league stages. With Olympics coming up in less than seven months, Sindhu will hope to start this year on a positive note.
She would start her campaign against Russia's Evgeniya Koretskaya in the first round and could meet the World No.1 Tai Tau Ying in the quarter-finals. Sindhu is joined by Saina Nehwal in the women's singles. Apart from one Indonesia Masters title, Nehwal too could not perform as well as she would have wanted last year. Standing on the 25th rank on the Olympic qualifications, the 29-year old would look to win as many tournament as she can to get an early entry into the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
In the men's singles, India will be represented by Srikanth Kidambi, B Sai Praneeth, Sameer Verma, Parupalli Kashyap, and HS Prannoy in the main rounds. Shubhankar Dey and Lakshay Sen will begin their campaign in the qualification round from tomorrow.
Sen's performance in 2019 impressed everyone as the young shuttler managed to reach the ranking of 32. He will face Hans-Kristian Solberg Vittinghus of Denmark in the qualifiers. Srikanth has a rather tough opening match as he faces second seeded Chou Tien Chen.
Praneeth will be up against Denmark’s Rasmus Gemke while Sameer Verma will start his campaign against Kantaphon Wangcharoen of Thailand.
Here is all you need to know about Malaysia Masters 2020
Tournament: PERODUA Malaysia Masters 2020
Category: Super 500
Prize Money: US $400,000
Venue: Axiata Arena, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Dates: January 7-12, 2020
Where to watch the Malaysia Masters 2020 matches in India?
The Malaysia Masters matches will be telecast live on Star Sports 1 and Star Sports 1 HD from the quarterfinals.
Malaysia Masters 2020 Live Stream Details
Live stream will be available on Hotstar.com from the quarter-final stages.