BWF World Championships 2022: Arjun-Kapila, Lakshya Sen sail into pre-quarters, Ponnappa-Reddy bow out

The BWF World Championships 2022 Day 3 happened on Wednesday. For India, the MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila progressed to the pre-quarters, while the Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy pair crashed out in Round 2.

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On Wednesday, the Indian men's doubles pair of MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila moved to the pre-quarterfinals of the 2022 BWF World Championships in Tokyo. However, the duo of Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy crashed out in the tournament's second round on the same day. In their second-round match-up, the unseeded Arjun and Kapila detracted the Danish eighth seeds Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen 21-17, 21-16. Next, they will face the Singaporean pair of Hee Yong Kai Terry and Loh Kean Hean. In contrast, Ponnappa and Sikki were handed a 21-15, 21-10 defeat by Chinese top seeds, Chen Qing Chen and Jia Yi Fan, within 42 minutes.

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The other Indian women's doubles pair of Pooja Dandu and Sanjana Santosh also bowed out of the competition, losing to Korean third seeds Lee So Hee and Shin Seung Chan 15-21, 7-21. Later during the day, HS Prannoy, Kidami Srikanth, the men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty and the women's doubles duo of Treesa Jolly-Gayatri Gopichand are scheduled to be in action.

Young Indian badminton ace Lakshya Sen sailed into the men's singles pre-quarterfinals with a straight-game win over Luis Penalver of Spain. The 2022 Commonwealth Games (CWG) gold-medalist Sen won his Round 2 match 21-17, 21-10, as he took 72 minutes to finish it. After trailing 3-4, the ninth-seeded Sen grasped a six-point lead at 13-7.

The Indian continued to march on before comfortably completing the opening game. Sen, a World Championship bronze medallist, maintained his hold over the Spaniard and won the second game considerably.

In the second, the first six points happened to be shared between the two. Regardless, the 21-year-old Indian stretched ahead as he rode on his superiority. As he enjoyed a big nine-point lead at a stage, it was only a matter of time before Sen got the job done.

(With inputs from PTI)