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After the completion of the badminton events of the Tokyo Olympics, the first international tournament of the revamped calendar of the Badminton World Federation will begin on Thursday.
Several seasoned badminton players, including star shuttlers Lakshya Sen, Ashwini Ponnappa, and N. Sikki Reddy, will spearhead the strong challenge at the Victor Denmark Masters International Challenge Badminton tournament.
The first badminton tournament post-Tokyo Olympics will be played at Esbjerg in Denmark from August 5 to 8. The qualifying rounds will get underway on Thursday, while the main draw will commence on Friday.
World No. 23 Lakshya will be the top seed in the men’s singles. The teenage badminton player will be eager to live up to his top billing in the four-day badminton tourney.
Before the pandemic, Lakshya was in superb form which helped him break into the world’s top-25 rankings. Nineteen-year-old Lakshya is a trainee at Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy in Bengaluru.
Subhankar Dey has been given the fourth seeding in the men’s singles, while world No. 61 Ajay Jayaram will be seeded sixth. Chirag Sen, Kiran George, Siddharth Pratap Singh and Alap Mishra are the other Indian players in the main draw.
In the qualifying stages, world No. 2 in the Under-19 boys singles Varun Kapur, Kevin Arokia Walter and Sankar Muthusamy Subramanian will be seen in action on the first day.
In the women’s singles, India No. 1 Aakarshi Kashyap will be the thirteenth seed. Sri Krishna Priya Kudaravalli will also be in the main draw.
Tarun Kona and Shivam Sharma will be the ninth seeds. Utkarsh Arora and Saurabh Sharma will be the sixteenth seeds in the men's doubles.
Runners-up at the Orleans Masters, Krishna Prasad Garaga and Vishnu Vardhan Goud, will be among the pairs to be watched out for in the tournament.
It will be a big opportunity to prove their credentials at the international level for Ashwini Ponnappa and Sikki Reddy. The experienced duo will be the second seeds in the women’s doubles. The world No. 27 pair, who missed the Tokyo Olympics qualification, will be itching to get going.
Sikki Reddy traveled to Bengaluru and trained with Ashwini for a couple of weeks before leaving for Denmark.
Ashwini Ponnappa will also be seeded in the mixed doubles. Ashwini Ponnappa will play with new partner Dhruv Rawat. Ashwini is teaming up with Dhruv Rawat of Uttarakhand because her regular partner Satwiksairaj Rankireddy has just returned from the Tokyo Olympics.
Another Indian pair of Shivam Sharma and Poorvisha S Ram will have to go through the qualifying rounds in the mixed doubles.
Teenager badminton player Tanya Hemanth confident of good performance
Promising teenager Tanya Hemanth will play local girl Sofie Karmann in the opening match of the qualifier. World No. 260 Tanya sounded confident and hopeful of a good performance in the tournament.
“Yes I am quite confident that I can qualify for the main draw just like I did in the Polish Open earlier this year. I have trained hard for the tournament and I will give my best,” said Tanya Hemanth, a trainee of Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy.
In the women’s singles Malvika Bansod, Ira Sharma and Samiya Imad Farooqui withdrew as they did not get a visa.
“We had sent Malvika's entry for the tournament expecting to get a visa. However, we did not get it citing Covid as a reason,” said Malvika Bansod’s mother Dr Trupti Bansod.
A winner of the Lithuanian Open in June, southpaw Malvika Bansod has jumped to her career-best world ranking of 115.
In the men’s singles too, there were four withdrawals. Siril Verma, Priyanshu Rajawat, Anirudh Janardhan and C Rahul Yadav have pulled out at the last moment.
Sankar Muthusamy Subramanian will face Karan Rajan Rajarajan of Denmark in the first round of qualifying on Thursday. World No. 2 Varun Kapur will take on Alex Lanier of France, while Kevin Arokia Walter will lock horns with Jan Louda of the Czech Republic.
Shivam Sharma and Poorvisha S Ram will square off against Spain’s Jaume Perez and Claudia Leal in mixed doubles.
