Saina Nehwal on Wednesday edged past Hong Kong’s Cheung Ngan Yi 23-21, 21-17 in 42 minutes to advance to the second round of the French Open in Paris.
World No 9 Saina and the men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty were the only Indians to record wins as the others continued their poor run.
Rankireddy and Chirag recorded a 21-16, 21-14 win over Jelle Maas and Robin Tabeling of the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, the Indian men’s singles campaign received three of the biggest blows after Kidambi Srikanth, Parupalli Kashyap and Sameer Verma were ousted following their shocking first-round defeat.
Verma was the first Indian male shuttler of the day to lose. Despite winning the first game 22-20, the 25-year-old lost two straight games by a narrow and identical margin of 18-21 to be on the losing side of the hard-fought match against Kenta Nishimoto of Japan.
Kashyap, on the other hand, was the victim of his dismal performance as he lost against Hong Kong’s Tien Chen Chou in straight games- 11-21, 9-21 on the second day of the tournament.
Just after Kashyap’s embarrassing show, star Indian player Srikanth took the court in a hope to provide some respite to the Indian contingent. He started off in a commendable manner taking the first game 21-15 but failed to sustain his upper hand and went on to lose two straight games 7-21, 14-21 to finish a disappointing day for the Indian camp.