Malvika Bansod and three more Indian shuttlers sealed wins on Thursday (October 31) to reach the quarterfinals in the ongoing Hylo Open 2024 badminton tournament, which is taking place at the Saarlandhalle in Saarbrccken, Germany.
Bansod defeated unseeded Irina Amalie Andersen of Denmark by a scoreline 21-13, 21-16 in the women’s singles round of 16 match that lasted 41 minutes. The sixth seed from India will next face fourth seed Nguyen Thuy Linh of Vietnam in the last 8 on Friday (November 1).
Bansod, the winner of Azerbaijan International in February and US Open semifinalist in June, raced to a 8-1 lead and capitalised on her momentum to secure an easy opening game. In the second, she trailed by 4-8 at one point, but made a comeback to clinch the match.
Joining Bansod in the women’s singles quarterfinal was, Rakshitha Sree Santhosh Ramraj, who upset second seed Kirsty Gilmour of Scotland by straight games 21-14, 21-12 in the other round of 16 match that lasted 36 minutes.
The 17-year-old Rakshitha will next face Denmark’s eighth seed Julie Dawall Jakobsen in the quarterfinal. If both Rakshitha and Bansod win their respective last 8 matches, they will face each other in an all-Indian semi-final.
Apart from the women’s singles duo of Bansod and Rakshitha, there was good news from the men’s singles category as well with Ayush Shetty and Sathish Kumar Karunakaran progressing to the last eight with straight games wins.
The 19-year-old Ayush Shetty, who was the bronze medalist at the Junior World Championships last year, defeated Italy’s Giovanni Toti 21-13, 21-9, setting up a quarterfinal clash with Finland’s Kalle Koljonen.
Sathish Kumar Karunakaran, seeded seventh set up QF clash with Christo Popov of France, with a 21-12, 21-15 win over England’s Henry Huang. He was also a part of the mixed doubles competition with Aadya Variyath, but lost to French pair of Tom Lalot Trescarte and Elsa Jacob 21-19, 21-13.
Earlier, several other singles shuttlers and the other doubles teams suffered first round exits as S. Sankar Muthusamy Subramanian, Chirag Sen and Keyru Mopati as well as Priya Konjengbam & Shruti Mishra pair lost their opening round matches on Tuesday and Wednesday.