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Disappointing news awaits Indian badminton fans as the India No. 1 men’s singles player, Kidambi Srikanth will not be in action before November. The World No. 10, who was the only player to reach the quarter-finals of last month’s Japan Open Superseries, unfortunately injured his right ankle at that very tournament.
Subsequent scans showed that he needed time to recover from it completely which has rendered him out of the entire European circuit.
Srikanth was originally supposed to start the European swing at next week’s Denmark Open Superseries Premier which will also see the return of the Rio Olympic silver medallist PV Sindhu. But due to the recent scan results, the 23-year-old will now next be seen in action at the China Open Superseries Premier that begins on November 15. The Fuzhou tournament is where Srikanth burst into the spotlight two years ago when he toppled the Chinese legend Lin Dan en route to the title.
The former World No. 3 made a post on his Facebook page a few days back, updating his fans about his current situation.
At the Japan Open quarter-finals, the eighth-seeded Srikanth saved a match point against Germany’s Marc Zwiebler but could not prevent himself from going down by the narrowest of margins, 21-18, 14-21, 19-21. Srikanth went on to play the Korea Open Superseries too the very next week. But he could not cross the first hurdle there and succumbed to a 10-21, 24-22, 17-21 defeat to Hong Kong shuttler Wong Wing ki Vincent.
It is now known that Srikanth was injured during that match and his movement was definitely hampered because of his ankle injury.
However, his performance in Tokyo helped him climb five places to re-enter the top 10 rankings.
It had so far been an inconsistent season for the India No. 1 after he began 2016 with a bang by winning the Syed Modi International Badminton Championships for the first time in his career after runner-up finishes for two consecutive years.
However, he failed to replicate that success elsewhere until the Australian Open Superseries in June where he reached the semi-finals.
He followed it up by winning three matches at the Rio Olympics, that included an upset of the fifth seed Jan O Jorgensen, before stretching the two-time Olympic champion Lin Dan to three games in the quarter-finals.
