India’s Rio Olympics silver medallist PV Sindhu started her campaign in Tokyo without breaking a sweat, cantering to a comprehensive 21-7, 21-10 win over Ksenia Polikarpova of Israel in a women’s singles Group J match yesterday.<\/p>\n
Sindhu, India’s biggest hope for a medal in badminton competitions at the Tokyo Olympics, raced to a straight games victory in just 29 minutes, not allowing her opponent any chance in the match.<\/p>\n
In the first game, Sindhu won 13 consecutive points from six to build a big lead that was enough to overwhelm Ksenia. In the second game too, Sindhu maintained the pressure, winning points at a steady rate as she started her campaign on a winning note.<\/p>\n
Ksenia is ranked 58th on the BWF World Rankings, while Sindhu is seventh. And the gulf was evident in the final outcome of the match. Such encounters against lower-ranked players tend to be a bit laborious for the higher-ranked players if they take things too easy and become a bit complacent.<\/p>\n
As the lower-ranked players do not have anything to lose, they come well prepared, thus causing problems for the higher-ranked player. Such a thing had happened for India’s B Sai Praneeth in the men’s singles Group D match on Saturday as he lost to Misha Zilberman of Israel.<\/p>\n
However, Sindhu went into the match very focused and played her usual game.<\/p>\n
“Even though my opponent was lower-ranked, I didn’t want to assume it would be easy. It is important to be focused. I made sure we had some rallies and I got used to the court,” Sindhu was quoted as saying in flash quotes provided by Badminton World Federation (BWF).<\/p>\n
Sindhu said she used the match as preparation for tougher opponents that she will encounter in the knockout stage.<\/p>\n
“It’s important to make sure you play all your strokes and get used to them on the court because you can’t play them all of a sudden against a stronger opponent, you can’t do that. It’s important to know that your strokes are going well,” she said.<\/p>\n
Sindhu said she will continue with the same approach in the next match against Cheung Ngan Yi of Hong Kong in the three-player group from which the winner will qualify for the pre-quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
“Each match is important, and it’s one match at a time. I’m thinking about my next opponent (Cheung Ngan Yi). I will miss the spectators, but everyone is supporting me virtually.”<\/p>\n
Asked about the pressure as she is hoping to add to the silver medal she won in 2016 Rio, Sindhu said she is taking the Tokyo Olympics as a fresh tournament and not thinking much about the past.<\/p>\n
“Tokyo is a fresh start, and it’s important to be ready every day. Everybody will be in top form. I came with that mindset, and I’m not thinking of the past, but what’s ahead.”<\/p>\n
If she wins her second Group J match, Sindhu has some tough opponents lined up in the knockout stage as she is scheduled to play third seed Mia Blichfeldt of Denmark in the pre-quarter finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India’s Rio Olympics silver medallist PV Sindhu started her campaign in Tokyo without breaking a sweat, cantering to a comprehensive 21-7, 21-10 win over Ksenia Polikarpova of Israel in a women’s singles Group J match yesterday. Sindhu, India’s biggest hope for a medal in badminton competitions at the Tokyo Olympics, raced to a straight games […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","category-main-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9230,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9229\/revisions\/9230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}