Defending world champions PV Sindhu and B Sai Praneeth were comfortably knocked out of the group stage in the badminton draw on Thursday for the Tokyo Olympics starting July 23.
Rio Games silver-winner Sindhu has been seeded sixth in Group J of women’s singles and Praneeth has been seeded 13th in Group D of men’s singles competition.
The world’s 10th men’s doubles pair of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy will compete in Group A.
Sindhu will face world number 34 Cheung Ngan Yi of Hong Kong and Ksenia Polikarpova of Israel at number 58 in the league stage and is likely to face 14th seed Mia Blichfeldt of Denmark in the pre-quarterfinals.
Praneeth, on the other hand, will have to beat world number 29 Mark Caljouw of the Netherlands and Israel’s Misha Zilberman at 47.
The 28-year-old from Hyderabad will face the winner of Group C if he finishes at the top of the group.
Chirag and Satwiksairaj, however, got a tight draw, which was announced by the BWF on Thursday.
The Indian pair will face top seeded Indonesian pair of Kevin Sanjay Sukamuljo and Marcus Fernaldi Gideon, world number three Li Yang and Wang Chi Lin of Chinese Taipei and England’s Ben Lane and Sean Wendy ranked 18th.
In doubles, the top two teams in the group advance to the quarter-finals.
Chirag and Satwik will meet the Group D runners-up, with second-seeded Mohd. Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan, if they top Group A, while the second-place finisher will face the winners of Group B, where home favorite Hiroyuki Endo. And Yuta Watanabe is drawn.
In the singles competition, the top players from each group will qualify for the knock-out stages.
In women’s singles, Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei will face group challengers Thu Linh Nguyen (Vietnam), Qi Xuefei (France) and Sabrina Jacquet (Switzerland), with the group winner set to get a first round bye. Knockout draw.
Tai is in the same quarter as fifth seed Ratchanok Intanon and 14th seed Gregoria Mariska Tunjung.
Egypt’s Doha Hani, the only player to compete in three categories, is drawn in the women’s singles Group A with top seed Chen Yu Fei and Turkey’s Neslihan Yigit.
Among the top men’s singles players, Olympic bronze medalist Viktor Axelsen, former All England champion Xi Yu Kei and Asian Games gold medalist Jonathan Christie will be in the same quarter of the knockout draw if they top their groups according to seeding.
Defending Olympic champion Chen Long, whose group mates are Spain’s Pablo Abian and Estonia’s Raul Must, will face All England champion Li Zi Jia in the first knockout round.
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