Malaysia Open: Kidambi, Ashwini-Tanisha move to second round

Kuala Lumpur [Malaysia], January 9 (ANI): Indian shuttler Kidambi Srikanth made it to the second round of the ongoing Malaysia Open 2024 following a comeback win over Indonesia's world number five ranked shuttler Jonathan Christie on Tuesday.
In the match against the 2018 Asian Games champion, Srikanth, who is ranked world number 24, beat Christie in 65 minutes by 12-21, 21-18, 21-16, as per Olympics.com. With this, Srikanth also secured his seventh win over Christie in 12 matches.
Kidambi, who peaked at world number one, will be facing Hong Kong's world number 20, NG Ka Long Angus in the next round of men's singles.
The women's doubles pair of Ashwini Ponnappa and Tanisha Crasto, who secured wins in Abu Dhabi and Guwahati Masters tournaments last year, also made a winning start to the campaign with a win over American duo Allison Lee and Francesca Corbett by 21-13, 21-16.
The Indian women's singles campaign ended in the first round itself as Aakarshi Kashyap lost to China's Zhang Yiman, a 2021 world championships bronze medal winner, by a 21-15, 21-15 margin.
With PV Sindhu sidelined due to injury, Kashyap was India's lone star in the women's category.
In the men's doubles competition, MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila lost to the Chinese Taipei duo Fang-Chih Lee and Fang-Jen Lee by 21-16, 21-19.
HS Prannoy, Lakshya Sen and Chirag Shetty-Satwiksairaj Rankireddy will start their campaign on Wednesday. The results of the tournament will count towards players' qualifying rankings for the Paris 2024 Olympics. The qualification window for badminton started on May 1 last year. (ANI)