India’s top badminton players, including PV Sindhu, HS Prannoy, and Saina Nehwal, will compete in the upcoming Badminton Asia Championships 2023 at the Sheikh Rashid Bin Hamdan Indoor Hall in Dubai. The tournament will begin on April 25th with group stage matches, and the finals will take place on April 30th.
India has an impressive history at the Badminton Asia Championships, winning a total of 17 medals over the past 40 years, including one gold medal in the men’s singles category. This year, only four Indian players have made it to the tournament: Sindhu, Prannoy, and the men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty.
Sindhu is seeded eighth in the women’s singles category, while Prannoy is seeded eighth in the men’s singles category.Satwik and Chirag are seeded sixth in the men’s doubles category.
Sindhu’s first match will be against Wen Chi Hsu from Taiwan, who is ranked 17th in the world. Saina Nehwal will face the winner of Qualifying Group B, which includes players from Indonesia, the Maldives, and Kazakhstan.
Malvika Bansod, who is a promising young shuttler, will face top-seeded Akane Yamaguchi in her opening match. Meanwhile, Aakarshi Kashyap will have a tough match against seventh-seeded Ratchanok Intanon in the first round.
Lakshya Sen, another rising star in Indian badminton, will face seventh-seeded Loh Kean Yew from Singapore in his opening match. Prannoy will play against Phone Pyae Naing from Myanmar, and Kidambi Srikanth will take on Adnan Ebrahim from Bahrain.
In the men’s doubles category, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, who won the Swiss Open earlier this year, will face the Malaysian pair of Tan Kian Meng and Tan Wee Kiong. Krishna Prasad Garaga and Vishnuvardhan Goud Panjala will play against fourth-seeded Takuro Hoki and Yugo Kobayashi from Japan, while MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila will face eighth-seeded ONG Yew Sin and Teo Ee Yi from Malaysia.
In the women’s doubles category, Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand will play against the Indonesian pair of Lanny Tria Mayasari and Ribka Sugiarto, while Ashwini Bhat K and Shikha Gautam will face Meilysa Trias Puspitasari and Rachel Allessya Rose, also from Indonesia. Unfortunately, no Indian pair has received a direct entry into the main draw of mixed doubles, and four pairs will have to play qualifiers for a chance to enter the main draw. These pairs include Ashwini Ponnappa-Sumeeth Reddy, Juhi Dewangan-Venkat Gaurav Prasad, Rohan Kapoor-Sikki Reddy, and Nithin HV-Poorvisha S Ram.
The schedule of the tournament is as follows: Group stage on April 25, Round 1 on April 26, Round 2 on April 27, Quarterfinals on April 28, Semifinals on April 29, and Finals on April 30. The Badminton Asia Championships 2023 will be broadcast live on Sony Sports TEN 2 channel and live streamed on SonyLIV platform in India.
