Sydney: Fresh from his semifinal appearance in the New Zealand Open badminton tournament and in the absence of the top guns, B Sai Praneeth will lead the Indian challenge at the Australian Open HSBC BWF World Tour Super 300 event, starting here Wednesday.
Established stars such as PV Sindhu, Saina Nehwal, Kidambi Srikanth and doubles exponent Ashwini Ponnappa have give the event a miss. In their absence, Sai Praneeth and the men’s doubles pair of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy will lead India’s campaign.
The Manu-Sumeeth combo has been seeded third and will open their campaign against Australian pair of Lukas Defolky and Michael Fariman. The other Indian men’s doubles pair of Arjun MR and Ramchandran Shlok will meet Australians Tam Raymond and Eric Vuong.
In men’s singles, World No.18 Praneeth has been handed top seeding and he will meet Israel’s Misha Zilberman in the opening round. Fourth seed Sameer Verma faces New Zealand’s Abhinav Manota, brother Sourabh will take on Takuma Ueda of Japan, Ajay Jayaram will square off against Japanese Riichi Takeshita and youngster Lakshya Sen will fight it out against Hong Kong’s seventh seed Lee Cheuk Yiu.
In the women’s singles, Sai Uttejitha Rao Chukka, Sri Krishna Priya Kudaravalli and Vaishnavi Reddy Jakka will be the Indians to watch out for. This will be a great opportunity for them to benefit from the exposure and carve out some important victories.
Praneeth meanwhile stated that he did not feel any pressure after being declared the top seed. “Seedings do not really matter as every match is tough,” he said. “So I will have to be at my best from the very first round.”
Press trust of India