Srikanth, Prannoy ousted from Swiss Open

World No. 9 and fifth seed H S Prannoy made a stunning second-round exit from the Swiss Open Super 300 badminton tournament after losing in straight games to unseeded Frenchman Christo Popov in Basel on Thursday.

Prannoy, favourite coming into the contest, looked a pale shadow of himself in front of the world No. 40, losing 8-21, 8-21 to bow out of the men's singles event.

This came after Kidambi Srikanth crashed out earlier on Thursday -- he lost to Hong Kong's Cheuk Yiu Lee.

Going by rankings, there was hardly anything to separate the 20th-ranked Srikanth and his 19th-ranked rival.

In a hard-fought match, Lee kept his composure to emerge a 22-20, 21-17 winner in the singles pre-quarter-final contest.

National champion Mithun Manjunath also bowed out in the second round, losing 19-21, 10-21 to Chia Hao Lee of Chinese Taipei.

On Wednesday night, Prannoy had defeated All England Championships finalist Shi Yu Qi of China to storm into the men's singles pre-quarterfinals.

Two-time Olympic medallist and fourth seed PV Sindhu made a positive start to her title defence on Wednesday, beating Jenjira Stadelmann of Switzerland 21-9, 21-16 in a lopsided opening round women's singles match.

Sindhu will take on 20-year-old Indonesian Putri Kusuma Wardani, who was part of the gold medal-winning team of the 2022 Asia Team Championships, in her second-round match.

The second-seeded men's pairing of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty will face the Taiwanese pair of Fang-Chih Lee and Fang-Jen Lee.