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After his career-best season, Indian shuttler Subhankar Dey carried on from where he left last year and made a winning start to his campaign at the Princess Sirivannavari Thailand Masters 2019 in Bangkok, Thailand on Wednesday. The World No. 49 beat the 48th ranked Misha Zilberman 21-19, 21-12 in 40 minutes to advance to the pre-quarter-finals.
Dey had a superb second half of the 2018 season, beating his idol Lin Dan en route to winning his biggest career title at the SaarLorLux Open. He also made it to the final of the Dubai International Challenge.
Up next for the Copenhagen-based shuttler is the seventh seed and World No. 30 Brice Leverdez of France.
The 25-year-old Dey was the only Indian to emerge victorious on the first day of main draw action at this Super 300 tournament. In women’s singles, both the rising Indian stars Vaishnavi Reddy Jakka and Sri Krishna Priya Kudaravalli bowed out.
Kudaravalli was outplayed in the first game and even though she rebounded strongly in the second game, she fell short in the end, losing 7-21, 14-21 to Hong Kong’s World No. 43 Deng Joy Xuan.
The 16-year-old Jakka, who recently became the World No. 2 in junior rankings, found the World No. 36 Saena Kawakami too strong and went down 9-21, 13-21.
In women’s doubles, Aparna Balan and Sruthi KP lost 13-21, 10-21 to China’s Chen Yingying and Zhang Shixian. In men’s doubles, Tarun Kona and Lim Khim Wah too went down 11-21, 12-21 to the Thai combine of Tinn Isriyanet and Nipitphon Phuangphuapet.
The Thailand Masters kickstarts the 2019 badminton season. With quite a few of the established names busy honing their skills at the ongoing Premier Badminton League, the tournament will be missing some of the top shuttlers.
Besides, with two Super 500 events lined up in a busy January calendar, most of the big stars have taken a rest this week and are expected to come back next week at the Malaysia Masters.
