Indian shuttlers had a disappointing day in the second round of the Arctic Open Super 500 tournament as none of the Indian players was able to win a match on Thursday at Vantaa, Finland.
Lakshya Sen, who was making his comeback to the BWF World tour since his fourth-place finish at the Paris Olympics, had a dreadful end in the second round against Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei.
Lakshya lost to Chou in a tightly contested three-game (21-19, 18-21, 15-21) match to suffer an early exit in the tournament.
He had a good start to the match as he gained a very good lead at the start of the opening game but then Chou made a slight comeback with his aggressive play but the Indian fought that well with a brilliant defense. He won the first game 21-19.
Lakshya had a slightly similar start to the second game but this time Chou tried not to commit his smashes and played a good rally game which troubled Lakshya and the match went into decider.
Lakshya tried to gain a big lead in the decider as well but he tried to overdo a few things and gave away many easy points which gave a massive lead to Chou at the final mid-game interval.
The lead proved crucial for Chou as he won the match despite some brilliant play from Lakshya.
Meanwhile, Kiran George playing against the experienced Jonatan Christie of Indonesia suffered a straight game (17-21, 8-21) defeat in his second round match.
In women’s singles, all three Indian players, Aakarshi Kashyap, Unnati Hooda, and Malvika Bansod also exited the tournament in the pre-quarterfinals, suffering straight-game defeats to higher-ranked opponents.