Text & Visual: Rajeev Bhatt
New Delhi, Jan 16: Lone Indian Mens Singles player, Kiran George kept his nerves under pressure to register straight game wins while the men’s doubles combination of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty came back from a game down to advance to the quarter-finals of the Yonex-Sunrise India Open 2025, a HSBC BWF World Tour Super 750 event, at the KD Jadhav Indoor Hall here on Thursday.
Kiran defeated Frenchman Alex Lanier 22-20, 21-13 in the men’s singles second round clash.Later in the day, 2022 champions Satwik and Chirag had to regroup after losing the first game to beat Japan’s Kenya Mitsuhashi/Hiroki Okamura 20-22, 21-14, 21-16.
Earlier, Kiran saved six game points against Lanier in the opening game of their second round clash. The 24-year-old, who got a last-minute entry into the competition from the reserves list, looked out of sorts as the Frenchman’s attacked precisely in the opening game.
Lanier raced to 20-14 lead in the opening game before Kiran staged an improbable comeback, winning eight straight points to pocket the game 22-20. At that stage, he simply kept the shuttle in play long enough for his opponent to make a mistake and the errors began coming think and fast for the Frenchman as the Indian started closing in.
“At 14-20, I was just taking at one point at a time, not thinking about the lead, whether I’m trailing. I was just playing one point at a time. I think that helped me to secure the game,” said Kiran after the win.
It looked like Satwik and Chirag will also take a straight games route to the round of 8 when they opened up a 18-14 lead and had a game point at 20-19 but could not convert it and lost the opening game. But that blip did not prove costly as they quickly took control of the action in the second game and then maintained the advantage to win in one hour 11 minutes.