BWF World Championships: Lakshya Sen enters pre-quarterfinals
Commonwealth Games champion Sen won his second round match 21-17, 21-10, taking 72 minutes to complete the formality. After trailing 3-4, the ninth seeded Sen grabbed a six-point lead to be 13-7. The Indian continued to stay ahead before comfortably wrapping up the first game. Sen, a world championship bronze medallist, then maintained his stranglehold over the Spanish shuttler and won the second game by a bigger margin. In the second game, the first six points were shared between the two players, but the 21-year-old Indian pulled ahead riding on his superior play. Enjoying a massive nine-point lead at one stage of the second game, it was only a matter of time before Sen completed the job. Last edition's runner-up Kidambi Srikanth crashed out after a straight game defeat to world number 32 Zhao Jun Peng. Kidambi went down against his Chinese counterpart 18-21, 17-21 in a match lasting only 34 minutes. The 29-year-old was out of sorts in the opening game as it took only 12 minutes for Zhao to take a 1-0 lead in the match. The Indian, already on the back foot, tried to up the ante in the second game and led 16-14 but too many unforced errors helped Zhao secure the victory. Earlier, the Indian men's doubles pair of M R Arjun and Dhruv Kapila moved to the pre-quarterfinals but Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy made a second round exit from the prestigious tournament. The unseeded Arjun and Kapila upstaged eighth seeds and last edition's bronze medallists Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen of Denmark 21-17, 21-16 in the their second round match. They will face Hee Yong Kai Terry and Loh Kean Hean of Singapore next.
