India’s Lakshya Sen secured a hard-fought win against Julien Carraggi on Monday to keep his hopes of qualifying for the next round at the 2024 Paris Olympics alive.
Sen, playing hours after his win first win against Kevin Cordon was “deleted,” was put under tremendous pressure by the world No 52 from Belgium.
The Indian struggled to keep up with Carraggi for a major part of the opening game with the latter placing his smashes to perfection. The 4-4 start soon became 8-11 in favour of Carraggi and it was not until 18-18 before the Indian could draw level.
Sen, as he is known for, took his play up a notch towards the end of the first game. Carraggi had no anwers and surrendered the opening game 19-21.
Having pocketed the first game, Sen went into an autopilot mode in the second game. Though Carragi kept things tight, he found a way to win points at crucial junctures and wrapped up the match in 43 minutes, winning the second game 21-14.
Sen will now be in action on Wednesday against the 2020 Tokyo Olympics bronze medallist Jonatan Christie. It will be a must-win contest for both the shuttlers, with the winner making it through to the knockouts and the loser crashing out of the competition.
Earlier in the day, the Indian women’s doubles pair of Ashwini Ponnappa and Tanisha Crasto were of no match to the Japanese fourth seeds Nami Matsuyama and Chiharu Shida.
Despite starting from the favourable end of the court, the Indians failed to pose any trouble to Matsuyama and Shida. They eventually went down 11-21, 12-21 in straight games to fall to their second consecutive loss.
The loss to the Japanese pair also means that Ponnappa and Crasto are out of contention from the 2024 Paris Olympics, with Matsuyama-Shida and the South Korean pair of Kim So Yeong and Kong Hee Yong already through to the quarter-finals with four points apiece in Group C.
Ponnappa and Crasto will next be in action against Australia’s Mapasa Setyana and Angela Yu for their final group match on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Indian pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty have advanced to the quarter-finals of men’s doubles.
Rankireddy and Shetty, who had their match on Monday cancelled with their opponents pulling out, are the first Indian men’s doubles pair to reach the quarter-finals of the Olympic Games.
This development came after France’s Lucas Corvee and Ronan Labar lost their match to Fajar Alfian and Muhammad Rian Adrianto, earlier in the day.
Rankireddy and Shetty are slated to play their final group match against Alfian and Adrianto on Tuesday.