Shuttlers Sourabh Verma, Parupalli Kashyap and Ajay Jayaram through to second round of Barcelona Spain Masters

Barcelona: Newly-crowned national champion Sourabh Verma, Parupalli Kashyap and Ajay Jayaram advanced to the men’s singles second round after winning their respective matches at the $150,000 Barcelona Spain Masters on Wednesday. [caption id=“attachment_4778341” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Sourabh Verma. Image courtesy: Twitter @BAI_media[/caption] Verma, who had clinched his third Senior National title in Guwahati last week, beat Spain’s Luis Enrique Penalver 21-15 21-16 in 33 minutes. He will clash with either Brazil’s Ygor Coelho or Ren Pengbo of China, who had defeated Lakshya Sen 21-8 21-12 on Tuesday. Former Commonwealth Games champion Kashyap, who had reached the semi-finals at Guwahati last week, defeated Wong Wing Ki Vincent of Hong Kong 27-25 21-18 in a 53-minute battle, while Ajay eked out a 18-21 21-16 21-17 victory over Malaysia’s Cheam June Wei in another match. Ajay will face former World No 1 and top seed Viktor Axelsen of Denmark, while Kashyap is likely to meet another Dane in Jan O Jorgensen in the next round of the BWF World Tour Super 300 event. Mugdha Agrey also made a positive start to her campaign, notching up a 21-19 21-16 win over Netherlands’ Soraya De Visch Eijbergen to enter the second round. In men’s doubles, rising pair of Krishna Prasad Garaga and Dhruv Kapila, who had reached the semi-finals at Guwahati, defeated France’s Christo Popov and Toma Junior Popov 21-19 21-19 to set up a clash with London Olympic silver medallists and third-seeded Danish pair of Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen. Among others, Senior National finalists Arjun MR and Ramchandran Shlok went down 14-21 15-21 to Korean eighth seeds Kim Won Ho and Seo Seung Jae in men’s doubles. The women’s doubles pair of Pooja Dandu and Sanjana Santosh fought hard before losing 15-21 21-15 16-21 to Cao Tong Wei and Yu Xiaohan of China.