India's star badminton player Saina Nehwal's hopes of qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics came as a shock as she crashed out of the first round of the All England Championship women's singles against Japan's Akane Yamaguchi.
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Saina has lost 11-21 8-21 against world number three Yamaguchi in just 28 minutes. However, in men's singles, Lakshya Sen defeated Hong Kong's Juk Yu Li 17-21, 21-8, 21-17 in a hard-fought first-round 59 minutes. Sen will now face second seed and world number seven Viktor Axelsen of Denmark for a place in the quarter-finals. Saina is ranked 20th in the BWF rankings with 46267 points and the 2012 London Olympic bronze medalist will have to make it to the top-16 by the cut-off date of April 28 to make it to the 2020 Tokyo Games. Saina will have to achieve some good results to qualify for the Olympics. In the coming weeks, this Indian player has to participate in Swiss Open (17 to 22 March), India Open (24 to 29 March) and Malaysia Open (21 March to 5 April).
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This has proved to be the ninth defeat in Saina's 11 matches against the Japanese player. She was eliminated in the first round for the third time in the current season. With the defeat of Saina, world champion PV Sindhu remains India's only hope in women's singles. On Wednesday, Sindhu defeated Beiwen Zheng of America in a straight game. In the men's singles, 18-year-old Sen is India's only hope as P Kashyap pulled out of the first round match on Wednesday while B Sai Praneeth lost. Kashyap decided to withdraw from the match against Shesar Hiren Rustavito only a minute later. He was 0–3 behind at the time.
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