India Open latest: Srikanth withdraws from the tournament

The HSBC BWF World Tour Super 500 Yonex-Sunrise India Open started on day 3 came out with an announcement that Kidambi Srikanth along with six other Indian players have tested positive for COVID-19 and will be pulling out of the season opener.

The tournament that commenced on Tuesday the 11th of January had some of the top shuttlers from world badminton participating. The BWF in association with BAI kicked off the India Open making mandatory testing for all the players as well as tournament match officials, BWF and BAI officials, support staff, vendors, and others involved in the organizing committee. So far all the players have completed their respective first-round matches and were on due course for their second.

In a statement released by the Badminton Association of India, “The players returned a positive result to a mandatory RT-PCR test conducted on Tuesday. The players and their doubles partners have all been withdrawn from the tournament.”

The list of players that have tested positive are Kidambi Srikanth, Ashwini pappa, Ritika Thaker, Treesa Jolly, Mithun Manjunath, Simran Aman Singh, Khushi Gupta. As these players have entered the second round BAI will not be able to replace them from the main draw and their opponents will automatically get a walkover to the next round.

Earlier Sai Praneeth and Dhruv Rawat had tested positive and withdrew from the tournament.