French Open: Saina Nehwal, Kidambi Srikanth through to second round; Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Ashwini Ponnappa bow out

Paris: Top Indian shuttlers Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth advanced to the second round of the French Open with straight-game wins but it was curtains for Sameer Verma at the $750,000 BWF event on Wednesday. [caption id=“attachment_4881241” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Saina Nehwal. AP[/caption] Saina, who finished runner-up in the Denmark Open last week, outclassed Japan’s Saena Kawakami 21-11 21-11 in the women’s singles while defending champion Srikanth beat Hong Kong’s Wong Wing Ki Vincent 21-19 21-13 in the men’s singles match in the opening round of the World Tour Super 750 event. World No 10 Saina will face either 2017 world champion Nozomi Okuhara of Japan or Spain’s Beatriz Corrales next. Fifth-seeded Srikanth will meet Korean Lee Dong Keun. Sameer, who had reached the quarter-finals last week, went down fighting 21-16 17-21 15-21 to Asian Games gold medallist Jonatan Christie of Indonesia in a little over an hour match. Men’s doubles pair of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy defeated Korean duo of Min Hyuk Kang and Kim Won Ho 21-18 21-17. They will square off against either Chinese third seeds Liu Cheng and Zhang Nan or Danish combination of Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen. Indian mixed doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa gave their everything before going down narrowly 22-24 21-18 19-21 to the husband-wife combination of Chris Adcock and Gabrielle Adcock from England. Top-seeded Chinese mixed doubles pair of Zheng Siwei and Huang Yaqiong ended the campaign of Rohan Kapoor and Kuhoo Garg with a 21-5 21-10 win.