Saina, Srikanth in second round at French Open

India’s leading shuttlers Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth advanced to the second round of the French Open with straight-game wins, but it was curtains for Sameer Verma at the US $750,000 BWF event, in Paris, on Wednesday.

Saina, who finished runner-up in the Denmark Open last week, outclassed Japan's Saena Kawakami 21-1,1 21-11 in the women's singles, while defending champion Srikanth beat Hong Kong's Wong Wing Ki Vincent 21-19, 21-13 in the men's singles opening round of the World Tour Super 750 event.

World No. 10 Saina will face either 2017 World champion Nozomi Okuhara of Japan or Spain's Beatriz Corrales next.

Fifth seeded Srikanth will meet Korean Lee Dong Keun.

Sameer, who had reached the quarter-finals last week, went down fighting 21-16, 17-21, 15-21 to Asian Games gold medallist Jonatan Christie of Indonesia in a little over an hour match.

2017 Singapore Open Champion B Sai Praneeth also crossed the opening hurdle, beating Brazil's Ygor Coelho 21-13, 21-17 to set up a clash with Asian Games gold medallist Jonatan Christie of Indonesia.

The men's doubles pair of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy defeated the Korean duo of Min Hyuk Kang and Kim Won Ho 21-18, 21-17. They will square off against either Chinese third seeds Liu Cheng and Zhang Nan or Danish combination of Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen.

The Indian mixed doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa gave everything before going down 22-24, 21-18, 19-21 to the husband-wife combination of Chris Adcock and Gabrielle Adcock of England.

The top seeded Chinese mixed doubles pair of Zheng Siwei and Huang Yaqiong ended the campaign of Rohan Kapoor and Kuhoo Garg, winning 21-5 21-10.