All England Championships 2020: Ashwini Ponnappa-N Sikki Reddy lose in women's doubles second round; PV Sindhu through to quarter-finals

Birmingham: Indian women’s doubles pair of Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy bowed out of the All England Championship after suffering a straight-game loss in the second round of the competition. World no 29 Ashwini and Sikki lost 13-21, 14-21 to seventh seed Japanese combination of Misaki Matsutomo and Ayaka Takahashi in a match that lasted 38 minutes on Thursday night. For Ashwini and Sikki, it was their eighth successive defeat against the Japanese combination. World Champion PV Sindhu is now the lone Indian remaining in the fray. She will face fourth seed Japan’s in the quarterfinals. Sindhu cruised into the quarter-finals of the All England Championships women’s singles with a straight-game win over Sung Ji Hyun of Korea on Thursday. [caption id=“attachment_7775431” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] PV Sindhu during the BWF World Tour Finals 2019. Source: Hotstar[/caption] The sixth-seeded Indian Olympic silver medallist won 21-19, 21-15 in a round of 16 match that lasted 49 minutes. Rising shuttler Lakshya Sen, however, was knocked out of the tournament after losing in straight games to Victor Axelsen in the men’s singles. Lakshya went down to the world number seven Dane 17-21 18-21 in a hard-fought second-round battle which lasted 45 minutes. The 18-year old Indian, who won five titles last season, had defeated Hong Kong’s Cheuk Yiu Lee 17-21 21-8 21-17 in the opening round. On Wednesday night, star Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal’s chances of qualifying for the Olympics took a hit after she made a first-round exit, following a loss to Japanese nemesis Akane Yamaguchi. Up against world number three Yamaguchi, it was a tough opening round for Saina, who lost 11-21 8-21 in just 28 minutes. Saina is placed 20th on the BWF rankings with 46267 points and the 2012 London Olympics bronze-medallist needs to enter the top-16 bracket by April 28 to make the cut for the 2020 Tokyo Games. She now needs strong performances to pocket crucial ranking points but considering that several sporting events are being cancelled in view of the deadly novel coronavirus outbreak, it remains to be seen how many she actually gets to play. The 29-year-old is scheduled to compete at the Swiss Open ( 17-22 March), India Open ( 24-29 March) and Malaysia Open ( 31-April 5 March) in the following weeks. It was Saina’s ninth defeat in 11 matches against the formidable Japanese and her third first-round exit this season. In the men’s singles, Parupalli Kashyap retired from his first-round contest against Shesar Hiren Rhustavito while B Sai Praneeth lost his match on Wednesday. Kashyap’s match lasted just one minute. He was trailing 0-3 when he decided to call it quits. The mixed doubles pair of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N Sikki Reddy advanced to the second round when top-seeded Chinese pair of Si Wei Zheng and Ya Qiong Huang retired while trailing 4-5.