Manjunath enters main draw, Krishna-Pratheek make it to second round

Representational Image. Pic Courtesy/iStock

India's Mithun Manjunath secured two wins in the men's singles qualifiers to progress to the main draw of Madrid Spain Masters Super 300 badminton tournament on Tuesday.

In the opening round, Manjunath, a former national champion, prevailed 15-21 24-22 21-18 over compatriot S Sankar Muthusamy, who had claimed the 2022 world junior championships silver medal in Spain.

A trainee at the Prakash Padukone academy, Manjunath then defeated Chinese Taipei's Liao Jhuo-Fu 21-13 21-13 to storm into the main draw.

The world no. 64 Indian will face another Taiwanese in Wang Tzu Wei in the main draw.

Indian doubles pair of Krishna Prasad Garaga and Sai Pratheek K outlasted Canada's Dong Adam (Xingyu) and Nyl Yakura 21-15 28-30 21-11 in a thrilling opener.

However, Commonwealth Games bronze medallists Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand fell in the opening round of women's doubles. Fifth-seeded Jolly and Gopichand were up against world No. 33 Annie Xu and Kerry Xu of the USA in the BWF Super 300 but ended up losing 18-21, 22-20, 18-21 in a closely-contested encounter that lasted 61 minutes.

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The Indian pair, seeded fifth, lost 18-21 22-20 18-21 to USA's Annie Xu and Kerry Xu, ranked 33rd to almost end their chances of making the cut for Paris Olympics.

On the other hand, despite winning his first men's singles qualifier against local player Alvaro Leal 21-9, 21-12, Sameer Verma failed to get past Indonesia's Jia Heng Jason Teh in the second round and lost 21-10, 21-14.

Aadya Variath was also beaten by Ukraine's Polina Buhrova in the women's singles qualifiers.

The men's doubles teams of MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila and Krishna Prasad Garaga and KS Pratheek will also be in action later in the day. While Arjun and Kapila are facing Job Castilo and Luis Montoya of Mexico, Garaga and Pratheek will take on Canada's Adam Dong and Nyl Yakura.

Sameer Verma also lost 10-21 14-21 to Singapore's Jia Heng Jason Teh in the qualifier. He had defeated Alvaro Leal 21-9 21-12 in the first round.

Aadya Variyath also lost in qualifiers.

(With agency inputs)