India’s Kiran George and Malvika Bansod faced early exits from the Orleans Masters 2024 badminton tournament in France after losing their respective opening round matches at the Palais des Sports in France on Wednesday.
Seeded third in the men’s singles, world No. 37 George lost 21-7, 17-21, 23-21 against compatriot Sathish Kumar Karunakaran, who is ranked 47th in the world. George had recently made it to the quarter-finals at the Indonesia Masters.
Malvika Bansod also suffered an upset at the hands of Hungarian shuttler Vivien Sandorhazi. Ranked World No. 51, the Indian badminton player lost 21-10, 21-15 against Sandorhazi, ranked 83rd.
The 22-year-old Bansod had won the Azerbaijan International last month and was seeded eighth in the women’s singles category at Orleans Masters.
Samiya Imad Farooqui and Tanya Hemanth also failed to progress to the round of 16 in women’s singles. While the former lost 21-19, 20-22, 12-21 against Belgian Lianne Tan, Hemanth was on the wrong end of a 21-14, 21-11 scoreline against Chinese Taipei’s Liang Ting-yu.
However, Anupama Upadhyaya managed to progress after securing a comfortable 21-7, 21-5 victory over Kaloyana Nalbantova of Bulgaria. Upadhyaya, who won two qualifiers on Tuesday to make the main draw, will square off against Hina Akechi of Japan in the pre-quarterfinals.
In the women’s doubles category, Simran Singhi and Ritika Thaker fell to Indonesian pair Meilysa Trias Puspita Sari and Rachel Allessya Rose 21-9, 21-20.
Karunakaran and Aadya Variath defeated Germans Patrick Scheiel and Franziska Volkmann 21-14, 21-18 to move to the next round of the mixed doubles where they will face Chen Cheng-kuan and Hsu Yin-hui of Chinese Taipei.
Ashith Surya and Amrutha Pramuthesh will be keeping Karunakaran and Variath company in the second round after their 21-12, 21-16 victory over Israeli pair Misha Zilberman and Svetlana Zilberman. They will take on Danish pair Jesper Toft and Clara Graverson.
B Sumeeth Reddy and Nelakurihi Sikki Reddy, however, crashed out after a 21-17, 19-21, 17-21 first-round loss to French mixed doubles pair Julien Maio and Lea Palermo.
Mithun Manjunath and Sankar Subramanian will be involved in men’s singles action later in the day.
2024-03-13 18:38:00
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