Markham: Tanya Hemnath and Aakarshi Kashyap advanced to the women’s singles second round, while Kidambi Srikanth retired midway through his opening match due to fitness issues at the Canada Open Super 300 badminton tournament here.
Aakarshi notched up a convincing 21-14, 21-12 win over France’s Anna Tatranova to set up a second-round clash against fourth seed Beiwen Zhang of the USA.
Tanya also progressed after defeating USA’s Disha Gupta 21-16, 21-18 and will next face Japan’s Riko Gunji.
Srikanth, who finished runner-up at the US Open Super 300 last week, was trailing 10-11 against Paris Olympic bronze medallist Lee Zii Jia of Malaysia in the men’s singles opening round when he retired after consulting coach B Sai Praneeth. It was otherwise a disappointing outing for the Indian contingent as seven of the nine singles players failed to cross the opening hurdle.
Fifth seed Devika Sihag lost 14-21, 15-21 to Chinese Taipei’s Tung Ciou-Tong, while Rakshitha Ramraj went down 15-21, 21-14, 15-21 to Canada’s Rachel Chan. Shriyanshi Valishetty suffered a 9-21, 18-21 defeat to Huang Ching Pi of Chinese Taipei, while Anmol Kharb lost 6-21, 26-24, 13-21 to top seed Michelle Li of Canada.
In the men’s singles, Saneeth Dayanand and Sankar Subramanian also bowed out in the opening round, while Achutaditya Rao Doddavarapu and Arjun Reddy Pochana exited the men’s doubles.
