Badminton: PV Sindhu and Lakshya Sen will participate in Arctic Open

India’s star players PV Sindhu and Lakshya Sen, who failed to win medals in the Paris Olympics, will make a comeback to the international stage from the Arctic Open Super 500 badminton tournament starting on Tuesday. This will be Sindhu and Sen’s first tournament after the Olympics. In the meantime, both of them focused on evaluating their game and making necessary improvements in it.

Sindhu meanwhile parted ways with her previous coach, Indonesia’s Agus Dwi Santoso, and appointed India’s Anup Sridhar and Korean veteran Lee Seon Il as her new coaches. On the other hand, Sen focused on her fitness. She spent most of her time at the Red Bull Arena in Austria during this time.

Sindhu’s first match in the Arctic Open will be against Michelle Lee of Canada, while Sen, who lost in the bronze medal match at the Olympics, will face Rasmus Gemke of Denmark. If two-time Olympic medalist Sindhu overcomes the first hurdle, she may face 2022 junior world champion 18-year-old Japanese player Tomoko Miyazaki in the next round, to whom she lost at the Swiss Open earlier this year.

For Sen, this will also be an opportunity to take revenge from Gemke. He lost to her at the India Open in 2023. If he manages to win this match, his next match could be against seventh seed Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei. Kidambi Srikanth, who returned to the Macau Open after being out for four months due to injury, will also present his challenge in the Arctic Open. He will continue his campaign from the qualifiers along with compatriots Kiran George and Satish Kumar Karunakaran.

In the qualifiers, former world number one Srikanth will face George, while Satish will take on Arnaud Merkle of France. Apart from Sindhu, in-form Malvika Bansod and Aakarshi Kashyap will also challenge in the women’s singles. Malvika, who reached the quarterfinals of the China Open Super 1000, will face Sung Shuo Yun of Chinese Taipei in the first round, while Aakarshi will face Germany’s Yvonne Lee. Another Indian player Unnati Hooda will face Israel’s Heli Neeman in the qualifiers. No Indian is participating in the men’s doubles, but Rituparna Panda and Swetaparna Panda will challenge in the women’s doubles while Satish and Aadya Variyath will challenge in the mixed doubles.