Lakshya Sen failed to qualify for the main draw while the pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty crashed out in the first round as Indian shuttlers got off to a poor start at Malaysia Masters here on Tuesday.
Rising player Lakshya went down to Denmark’s Hans-Kristian Solberg Vittinghus 21-11, 18-21, 14-21 in a hard-fought match in the men’s singles qualifiers that lasted 49 minutes.
Lakshya’s compatriot Shubhankar Dey also failed to make the men’s singles main draw after losing 15-21, 15-21 to Malaysia’s Liew Daren in the qualifiers of the Super 500 tournament.
The biggest upset of the day for India was the ouster of the world number 12 men’s doubles duo of Rankireddy and and Shetty, who fought hard before going down to world number 19 Ong Yew Sin and Teo Ee Yi of Malaysia.
The India duo lost 15-21, 21-18, 15-21 against the lower-ranked local pair in a first round duel that lasted 52 minutes.
It was a bad day in office for the Indians as the women’s doubles pair of Pooja Dandu and Sanjana Santosh also failed to make the main draw.
Dandu and Santosh lost to the Indonesian pair of Siti Fadia Silva Ramadhanti and Ribka Sugiarto 15-21, 10-21.
Today, top singles players including PV Sindhu, Saina Nehwal, Parupalli Kashyap will open theri campaign.