Srikant, Sameer Verma advance into 2nd round of World Badminton Championships

India made a promising start at the BWF World Championship with shuttler Kidambi Srikanth, Sameer Verma and Tanvi Lad advancing to the second round of the singles competition in Glasgow yesterday. 

Srikanth, seeded eighth, who won the Indonesia Super series premier and Australian Super series Open in June this year, defeated Russia's Sergey Sirant 21-13; 21-12 in less than half an hour match. Now he will clash with France's Lucas Corvee in the next round today.

Sameer Verma, who won the Syed Modi Grand Prix Gold in January this year, also reached the second round after his opponent Spain's Pablo Abian retired midway with the score reading 21-8, 17-4. Sameer will meet either England's Rajiv Ouseph or



Czech Adam Mendrek in the next round.

In the women's singles first round, Tanvi Lad fought back to beat England's Chloe Birch 17-21, 21-10, 21-19. Tanvi will now face a much stiffer challenge next as she will take on second seed Sung Ji Hyun of South Korea.

In other matches of Indian interest, young mixed doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Maneesha K defeated Hong Kong pair of Tam Chun Hei and Ng Tsz Yau 24-22 21-17 to also start their campaign on a positive note.

The Indo-Malaysian pair of Prajakta Sawant and Yogendran Khrishnan saw off Chinese Taipei's Lu Ching Yao and Chiang Kai Hsin 21-15 13-21 21-18 in another mixed doubles match.