Badminton Asia Mixed Team Championships 2023: PV Sindhu, HS Prannoy headline strong Indian contingent
Lakshya Sen and Chirag Shetty-Satwiksairaj Rankireddy are also part of the Indian badminton team for the mixed team championship.
Badminton
Double Olympic medallist PV Sindhu and HS Prannoy will lead the Indian team at the Badminton Asia Mixed Team Championships 2023 to be held from February 14 to 19 in Dubai.
PV Sindhu and HS Prannoy are the highest-ranked Indian badminton players in the women’s and men’s singles, respectively.
While 2022 Commonwealth Games champion PV Sindhu is ranked seventh, HS Prannoy moved up to eighth in the latest badminton world rankings.
There are two players and teams selected in each category (singles and doubles), apart from the mixed doubles competition, which features only one pair.
Joining PV Sindhu in the women’s singles will be world No. 32 Aakarshi Kashyap, who won the Bangladesh International Challenge in December. She also made the quarter-finals at CWG 2022.
Meanwhile, world No. 10 Lakshya Sen is the second player in the men’s singles of the biennial competition. The 21-year-old had an impressive 2022 which saw him winning the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games.
French Open champions Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty will shoulder the responsibility in the men’s doubles, with Krishna Prasad G and Vishnuvardhan Goud making it to the team as the second pair.
The Badminton Association of India (BAI) followed the system of picking the top players directly and conducting trials for the rest of the squad.
All England semi-finalists Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly will be the main women’s doubles pair with Ishaan Bhatnagar and Tanisha Castro taking the mixed doubles slots.
India could not go past the group stage in the last edition of the Asian Mixed Team Championship, held in 2019. The 2021 edition was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Indian badminton team was knocked out in the quarter-finals of the first edition held in 2017.
Badminton Asia Mixed Team Championship 2023: India squad
Men’s singles: Lakshya Sen, HS Prannoy
Women’s singles: PV Sindhu, Aakarshi Kashyap
Men’s doubles: Satwiksairaj Ranikreddy/Chirag Shetty, Krishna Prasad Garga/Vishnuvardhan Goud P
Women’s doubles: Treesa Jolly/Gayatri Gopichand, Ashwini Bhat/Shikha Gautam
Mixed doubles: Ishaan Bhatnagar/Tanisha Crasto