It was a good outing for Top ranked Indian paddlers Sathiyan Gnanasekaran and Manika Batra.
Both of them won their first round singles matches and then combined for the mixed doubles to move into Quarterfinals
Sathiyan had a rather tough match and was actually down 1-2 after the finish of three games. He made a good comeback of sorts to win the fourth game convincingly 11-6
The last game turned out to be very exciting and Sathiyan found himself in a spot of bother when he was down 8-10 from there on he saved match point and won four consecutive points to seal the match
He will be up against a much tougher opponent in Round two as World Number 5 and Second seed of the tournament , Jingkun Lian who got a bye in first is waiting for him there.
Manika had a rather straightforward match as she closed it in straight games against her opponent from South Korea
Manika defeated Sun Kyu Won 11-3,11-6,12-10
The real fight was shown only in third game but by then Manika already had the upper hand in the match
She will face Yang from Monaco in the next round, Yang is ranked 18 in the world
In the Mixed Doubles the only Indian pair in the main draw Manika and Sathiyan scored a comfortable victory over the local pairing
They won the first game quickly 11-5 but lost the second one despite being on 10-8 they lost four straight points
Going to third game they didnt stop the aggressive play and closed the game at 11-5 and then gave no chance to their opponent in the fourth winning it 11-9
In other matches Sutirtha lost to Lee 6-11,11-6,8-11,9-11 while in the men’s doubles the only Indian pair Manav and Harmeet lost to Korean pair of Jang Lim in straight games 9-11,7-11,9-11
