He has been under pressure to get the results, and Lakshya Sen ensured he won as a favourite, downing Jun Hao Leong on Friday to make the Thailand Open semifinals, his first of 2023. It needed adjusting to the conditions, but Sen brought out his A-game while downing the defensively stubborn Leong.
Sen will play second seed and local hope Kunlavut Vitidsarn in the semifinals.
It was his third match on the same court, but conditions seemed to have turned a 180. The end that was fast until yesterday was playing slow, and vice versa. It meant he took some time to get started, with his shots going long and some of the opponent’s lifts landing in, ruining his judgment. But once he got a hang of things, he raced to a 21-19, 21-11 win.
Sen had played Leong four years ago and would pull out a close first set. Staying sharp at the net and playing deep down the line smash winners, he had the match in his pocket in 41 minutes.
This win followed the big one against Li Shifeng, the All-England champion where Sen played a near-perfect game, executing the strategy planned by his team on Thursday. At 20-12, he had gotten a tad anxious and dropped three rallies, but otherwise, Sen was on song against the Chinese.
𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗢 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗤𝗨𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦 🔥
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It was a good bounce back from last week’s second-round loss, after he beat Loh Kean Yew in the opener at Malaysia. He had not beaten Ng ka long Angus before and got drawn into rallies and couldn’t close out the match. “But he had been playing well, we knew that much,” coach Anup Sridhar said. “He’s had some poor luck, he caught a viral bug at the start of the European swing the worst possible time, and had back spasms before yet another tournament. There’s been pressure on us all to get the results and this week he is playing well,” the coach added.
Error-prone George loses
After three good results, Kiran George was too error-prone and suffered a 21-16, 21-17 loss to Toma Junior Popov in his quarterfinal. The Frenchman dominated with his big, rangy, power game pulling away from 12-12 in the opener. Kiran led 11-8, but just couldn’t cling onto the lead, and sprayed the shuttle long to go down in straight sets.
Still, it’s been a good run for the Bangalore-based shuttler from Kochi. Coach Vimal Kumar was optimistic about the future saying, “I feel Priyanshu (Rajawat), Kiran, Mithun (Manjunatha) along with Lakshya can be our main strength in Singles after Prannoy and Srikanth in the coming years.”
Kiran has been working on his side-to-side defence, and while it came good against the pair of Chinese he beat, it let him down against Popov. He also needs an injection of pace when moving towards the net – that pouncing step for the follow-up, but he has a good hit smash and deceptive clears. Blessed with more variations and deceptions than Sen, he however will need to work on his temperament much more though he reckons this week has given him enough confidence to want to play more at this level.
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