Kidambi Srikanth enters second round of German Open

Kidambi Srikanth made a winning start as he defeated France's Brice Leverdez in a three-game opener at the German Open Super 300 badminton tournament on Tuesday. The eighth seeded Indian, who was forced out of the India Open Super 500 event in January after testing positive for COVID, prevailed 21-10 13-21 21-7 in 48 minutes over world no 39 Leverdez to extend his head-to-head count to 4-0.

The world no 11 Indian will take on China's Lu Guang Zu in the next round. Srikanth has a 2-0 record against the world no 27 Chinese.

The 29-year-old from Guntur looked in good touch as he zoomed from 6-6 to 19-8 in a jiffy and pocketed the opening game comfortably. Leverdez made a roaring comeback in the second game as he dominated the proceeding and led from the start to finish to make it 1-1.

In the decider, Srikanth found his rhythm back as he constructed the points well and slowly made his way to 11-5 at the break and kept his nose ahead to soon jump to 18-7 before sealing it comfortably in the end.