Indonesia Masters 2021: Indians aim for a semifinals spot

Kidambi Srikanth, PV Sindhu, and HS Prannoy put up good performances and made their way into the second round at the BWF Super 750 Indonesia Masters event.

PV Sindhu kicked off with an early match against Spain’s Clara Azurmendi. The Indian third seed was coming off an unerring win over Thailand’s Supanida Katethong looked poised for another straight-game win over the world no.47.

But the Spaniard surprised the double Olympic medalist with a feisty performance and took the first game 21-17. The former world champion came back stronger winning games two and three 21-7, 21-12, and closed the match in just under 50 minutes.

In other matches, Kidambi Srikanth is up against local favorite sixth seed Jonatan Christie. Both Srikanth and Christie survived a hard challenge in the first round against Christo Popov and Sitthikom Thammasin respectively. HS Prannoy is up against second seed and reigning Olympic gold medalist Viktor Axelsen.

Lakshya Sen was up against world no.1 Kento Momota in the second round. The Indian youngster played a free-flowing game but the Japanese master was too good on the day as he wrapped up the match in two straight games 21-13, 21-19 in just 46 minutes.

In the mixed doubles, Dhruv Kapila-Sikki Reddy who stunned the second seeds Praveen Jordan-Melati Oktavianti in the first round went down fighting 15-21, 23-21, 18-21 against Thailand’s Supak Jomkoh-Supissar Paewsampran in the second round.

Sikki Reddy along with Ashwini Ponnappa made it through to the second round in the women’s doubles category, they will be up against Thailand’s third seeds Jongkolphan Kitiharakul-Rawinda Prajongjai.