Hylo Open 2022 badminton: Lakshya Sen exits in opening round

Indian badminton player Lakshya Sen suffered a shock first round exit from the Hylo Open 2022 BWF Super 300 tournament’s men’s singles tournament at Saarbrucken, Germany on Tuesday.

Commonwealth Games champion Lakshya Sen, world No. 8 in the badminton rankings and the seventh-seed, suffered a heavy 21-12, 21-5 defeat to Hong Kong’s Angus Ng Ka Long in 27 minutes.

Angus Ng Ka Long’s opponent in the next round will be France’s Toma Popov Junior.

Angus Ng Ka Long, ranked seven places below the Indian badminton player, came out firing on all cylinders and the Hong Kong player’s aggressive approach took Lakshya Sen by surprise.

A flurry of eight points on the trot towards the start of the game pushed Angus to a comfortable lead early on and the Hong Kong player rode the momentum to bag the first game comfortably.

This was the first meeting between the two players.

Things only got worse for the Indian badminton player in the second game as Lakshya Sen struggled to cope with the Hong Kong player’s intensity and lost convincingly.

It was Lakshya Sen’s second successive first round exit from a BWF tournament. He lost to compatriot Kidambi Srikanth in the opening round of the French Open last week.

Earlier in the day, India’s mixed doubles pair of Ishaan Bhatnagar and Tanisha Crasto bowed out after losing to China’s Huang Dongping, one half of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics mixed doubles champions, and Feng Yanzhe 21-13, 21-12.

Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, who became the first Indian doubles pair to win a BWF Super 750 title at the French Open last week, will take the court tomorrow and so will Kidambi Srikanth, HS Prannoy and Saina Nehwal.