India’s campaign at the 2026 India Open unraveled spectacularly at the Indira Gandhi Stadium in Delhi as all apart from Lakshya Sen crashed out in the Round of 16 on Thursday.
Up against Kenta Nishimoto for a spot in the quarter-finals, Sen registered a 21-19, 21-11 wins in straight games.
The going was tough even for Sen in the initial stages of the first game against Nishimoto as the Indian was struggling to find his rhythm and length of his strokes.
He trailed the Japanese shuttler 11-16 in the opening game and then 14-18 but kept on engaging his opponent in long rallies and came up with some brilliant defensive strokes to parry Nishimoto’s smashes to claw back.
He won five straight points to take the lead and then wrapped up the opening game on the very first opportunity.
Sen was much more clinical in the second game, varying his pace and going for the kill whenever he found an opportunity.
As he grew in confidence, the 24-year-old mixed his half smashes with clever reserve drops to keep his opponent guessing and sealed his quarterfinal spot in 50 minutes.
“At the start of the opening game I was struggling with my rhythm a bit and was lifting short and that allowing him to attack more. But then I started lifting the shuttle longer and focused on defending well and I think that turned the first game,” said Sen, who will next face Chinese Taipei’s Lin Chun-Yi in the quarter-finals.
“In the second game, I knew I could not give him the opportunity to keep playing his game and so mixed my speed and it worked,” he added.
Sen’s win was the only joy the home fans would have in the third day of play.
The experienced HS Prannoy and Kidambi Srikanth both lost out their respective matches after tough three-game battles.
While Prannoy lost 21-18, 19-21, 14-21 to the former world champion Loh Kean Yew in a match halted by bird poop twice, Srikanth went down fighting 14-21, 21-17, 17-21 to the 2025 BWF World Tour Finals champion Christo Popov.
The Indian campaign in women’s singles also came to a close on Thursday with Malvika Bansod suffering a 18-21, 15-21 loss at the hands of fifth seed Han Yue of China.
Hariharan Amsakarunan and Arjun MR also bowed out of the men’s doubles competition with a 15-21, 15-21 loss to China’s fourth seeded Liang Wei Keng and Wang Chang.
However, the biggest upset of the round came late in the day when the former world No 1 pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty failed to breach the challenge posed by Japan’s Hiroki Midorikawa and Kyohei Yamashita.
The Indians were made to work really hard before eventually surrendering 27-25, 21-23, 19-21 in a very closely fought battle.
