Kidambi Srikanth beat Lakshya Sen to book his Asian Games berth as he and Ashmita Chaliha topped the men's and women's singles selection trials on Sunday.
Srikanth and Chaliha remained unbeaten in their six matches during the four-day long trials at the Jwala Gutta Badminton Academy in Hyderabad to join PV Sindhu and HS Prannoy for the individual competitions as the selectors named a 19-member squad for the continental event.
Srikanth, who topped group A with three wins, beat Siddhanth Gupta 21-13 21-16 before notching up a 21-15 21-14 win over Lakshya Sen in stage 2 of the trials on Sunday. The former world No 1 had defeated national champion Mithun Manjunath 22-24 21-13 21-14 on Saturday.
While Srikanth topped stage 2, Lakshya was second in 1-4 ranking with his loss against the former being the only one. The Commonwealth Games champion had registered four wins to top group B. On Sunday, Lakshya saw off Manjunath 21-17 21-8 before losing to Srikanth. He had beaten Gupta 21-17 21-11 in his first match of stage 2 on Saturday.
With two losses and one win, Manjunath finished third in 1-4 ranking in stage 2. Lakshya and Manjunath will thus complete the men's singles lineup in the team championship.
𝗔𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 📢
Presenting the 🇮🇳 squad for the #AsianGames 🏸 🔥
Get Ready 😍@himantabiswa | @sanjay091968 | @lakhaniarun1#IndiaontheRise#Badminton pic.twitter.com/netnpORzdp
- BAI Media (@BAI_Media) May 7, 2023
In women's singles, Chaliha and Anupama Upadhyaya finished in the top two positions followed by Malvika Bansod in stage 2, while Unnati Hooda lost all three matches.
Anupama Upadhyaya and Malvika thus will be the other singles players in the women's team event.
In men's doubles, the world No 23 men's pairing of Dhruv Kapila and MR Arjun were top based on games won and lost following a three-way tie after two other pairs -- Suraj Goala and Pruthvi Roy, and Krishna prasad and Vishnuvardhan Goud -- also notched up two wins from three matches. Dhruv-Arjun will thus join Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy in the team
In women's doubles, TanishaCrasto and Ashwini Ponnappa finished at the top after winning both their matches and will be the other women's doubles pair in the team, apart from Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly.
In mixed doubles, Sai Pratheek K and Tanisha Crasto finished at the top, while Rohan Kapoor and N Sikki Reddy were at the second position in the final standings after a round-robin system.
The Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, are scheduled to be played from September 23-October 8.