Badminton Asia Team Championship: Lakshya Sen and Malvika Bansod to lead Indian challenge in the absence of PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth

Former World No. 1 Kidambi Srikanth and India’s top women shuttler PV Sindhu will be absent as they have been rested for the tournament.

The 21-year-old Nagpur native stormed onto the international badminton scene with Maldives and Nepal International titles in 2019. She also advanced to the 2022 Syed Modi International championship match but fell to P.V Sindhu in straight games. 

Malvika Bansod has been a regular face for India at international events and will now be able to prove herself at the Badminton Asia Team Championship in Malaysia.

The participating nations will be divided into two groups of four teams each. All teams will face every other team in the group in a round-robin format.

Each preliminary round match will feature three singles and two doubles clashes. The first team to win three games will win the tie and earn points. The top two teams from each group will advance to the semifinals.

The Indian contingent will consist of the following: 

Men’s Singles: Lakshya Sen, Kiran George, Mithun Manjunath and Raghu Mariswamy 

Women’s Singles: Malvika Bansod, Tara Shah, Ashmita Chaliha and Aakarshi Kashyap

Men’s Doubles: Amsakarunan Hariharan/Ruban Kumar, PS Ravikrishna/Sankar Prasad Udayakumar and Dingku Singh Konthoujam/Manjit Singh Khwairakpam 

Women’s Doubles: Simran Singhi/Khushi Gupta, Nila Valluvan/Arul Bala Radhakrishnan and Arathi Sara Sunil/Riza Mahreen

Groups

The men’s contingent of India has been placed in Group A alongside Hong Kong, South Korea and the defending champions Indonesia. Group B consists of Kazakhstan, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan,

In the women’s category, India has been placed in a tough group consisting of the hosts Malaysia and the defending champions Japan. Meanwhile, the other group will feature Indonesia, South Korea, Hong Kong and Kazakhstan.

Indian men

Date	Team A	Team B	Time
February 15	India	South Korea	1:30 PM IST
February 17	India	Hong Kong	7:30 AM IST
February 18	India	Indonesia	7:30 AM IST

 

 

Indian women

Date	Team A	Team B	Time
February 16	India	Malaysia	1:30 PM IST
February 18	India	Japan	7:30 AM IST