Bad day for India in Malaysian Masters

Kuala Lumpur: Indian shuttlers got off to a poor start at the Malaysia Master here on Tuesday with rising star Lakshya Sen failing to qualify for the main draw and the pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty crashing out in the first round.

Sen went down to Denmark's Hans-Kristian Solberg Vittinghus 21-11 18-21 14-21 in a 49-minute hard-fought match in the men's singles qualifiers.

Shubhankar Dey also failed to make the men's singles main draw of the Super 500 tournament, losing 15-21 15-21 to Malaysia's Liew Daren.

The biggest upset of the day for India was the ouster of the world number 12 men's doubles duo of Rankireddy and and Shetty, who fought hard before losing to the world number 19 pair Ong Yew Sin and Teo Ee Yi of Malaysia.

The India duo went down 15-21 21-18 15-21 in a first round duel that lasted 52 minutes.

It was a bad day for India as the women's doubles pair of Pooja Dandu and Sanjana Santosh too failed to make the main draw. Dandu and Santosh were beaten by the Indonesian pair of Siti Fadia Silva Ramadhanti and Ribka Sugiarto 15-21 10-21.

On Wednesday, Parupalli Kashyap will open his campaign against top seed Kento Momota, while Kidambi Srikanth will take on second seed Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei in the men's singles opening round.

Among other Indian men's singles shuttlers, Sameer Verma will take on Thailand's Kantaphon Wangcharoen while H S Prannoy will be up against Kanta Tsuneyama of Japan in the opening round. B Sai Praneeth, meanwhile, will face Denmark's Rasmus Gemke.

The Indian women singles shuttlers will also open their campaigns on Wednesday with sixth seed P V Sindhu taking on Russia's Evgeniya Kosetskaya, while Sania Nehwal will be up against Lianne Tan of Belgium.

In the mixed doubles, the Indian pair of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N Sikki Reddy are up for a tough first round encounter as they are pitted against top seeds Zheng Si Wei and Huang Ya Qiong of China.