Young shuttler Lakshya Sen on Sunday emerged as the first Indian to grab an Indian Open men’s singles title in the debut tournament after beating current World Champion Loh Kean Yew 24-22, 21-17 at IG Stadium, New Delhi. Lakshay claimed his maiden India Open Super 500 title by stunning the Singaporean who was crowned the title of World Champion only last month.
Lakshya in the finals displayed both maturity and control to grab an upper hand over Kean Yew who had defeated Kidambi Srikanth in December to win the World Championship title. The Indian had also won bronze in the same tournament after losing to Srikanth in the semi-finals.
I’m extremely happy with the victory,” said Lakshya after the match. “This is the biggest World Tour tournament that I have managed to win. Towards the closing stages, I was a bit nervous and anxious to finish off the game because it is a big tournament for me,” he added.
In the first game, Lakshya was leading the game with 16-10 before Kean Yew managed to level the proceedings at 19-19. When it started to look like that the Almora boy would crumble under pressure, he clinched the first game with 24-22.
In the second game, Lakshys surprised everyone including Kean Yew with his blazing attack. In the face of his all-out attack, Loh started to make mistakes and lose his rhythm. At 19-17, Lakshya scored two of the biggest points in his life to register a memorable victory.
Earlier on Sunday, Indian men’s doubles pair Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty won the men’s doubles title by beating top-seeded Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan of Indonesia with 21-16, 26-24.
“It was a dream match for us, we still can’t believe it. We had a clear plan and we wanted to implement that. I feel we played one of our best matches ever. We stayed calm. I could see they were under pressure,” Satwik said.
In other games, Hee Yong Kai Terry and Tan Wei Han of Singapore defeated Malaysia’s Chen Tang Jie and Peck Yen Wei registered a 21-15, 21-18 win to grab the mixed doubles title. On the other hand, Benyapa Aimsaard and Nuntakarn Aimsaard of Thailand defeated Russia’s Anastasiia Akchurina and Olga Morozova 21-13, 21-5 to win the women’s doubles finals.
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