PV Sindhu should comfortably enter knock-out stage at Tokyo 2020, says Vimal Kumar

Former national coach Vimal Kumar believes Rio 2016 silver medallist PV Sindhu should sail into the knockout stages of women's singles event quite comfortably after the draws for badminton events at Tokyo 2020 were announced on Thursday.

The sixth seeded Indian shuttler has been drawn against unseeded Cheung Ngan Yi of Hong Kong and Ksenia Polikarpova of Israel in the Group J of the women's singles event.

"The initial stage looks good for PV Sindhu. Her Hong Kong opponent (Cheung Ngan Yi) is okay, it looks like a comfortable draw," Vimal Kumar told Olympics.com.

Sindhu, who will be accompanied by her new coach Park Tae-sang of South Korea at Tokyo 2020, could face 13th seeded Mia Blichfeldt in the knock-out stages. Kumar, however, feels that second seeded Tai Tzu Ying of Taiwan will be the player to beat for the Hyderabadi shuttler.

"Sindhu has beaten all the top players. The main person who has been troubling her is Tai Tzu Ying. It is tough but it's always good to get such a group when she can get some matches under her belt and look at the next stage confidently," Kumar said.

Kumar, who represented India at the Barcelona 1992 Olympics, also mentioned that Sindhu will head into Tokyo 2020 as a much more established player than she was at Rio 2016.

"She (Sindhu) is a World Champion and very strong medal contender unlike previous time (Rio Olympics) when she was not known, she is an established champion and should definitely come back with a medal," he said.

Meanwhile, the two-time national champion also feels that Sai Praneeth should progress from his group too but he has to be wary about Dutch star Mark Caljouw. The third player in Group D is Misha Zilberman of Israel.

"I think Sai Praneeth should top the group. I don't see much competition for him there. The only thing is he can get some resistance from Mark Caljouw, the current All England semi-finalist. He is quite good and could turn out to be tricky but he should go through," Kumar said.

"But the men's doubles draw for Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy looks a bit tough," he added.

The Indian duo will be up against Indonesian top seeds Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo/Marcus Fernaldi Gideon; reigning BWF World Tour Finals champions Lee Yang/Wang Chi-Lin of Chinese Taipei and Great Britain’s Ben Lane/Sean Vendy.

Satwik and Chirag will have to finish in the top two spots to progress.

The badminton events will run from July 24 to August 2 at the Musashino Forest Sports Plaza in Tokyo.