Battling with injuries, Parupalli Kashyap kicked off his campaign in style when he got past Hsu Jen Hao of Chinese Taipei in the Hong Kong World Tour Super 500 tournament’s qualifying round on Tuesday. Kashyap won 21-7 12-21 21-18 but didn’t have to break much sweat in the 63-minute affair.
Indian shuttler will now take on seventh seeded Anthony Sinisuka Ginting in the main draw. Kashyap, who is a former world number 6, though showed consistency during the match. The Indian has been struggling for years for his knee injury that shattered his Rio Olympics dream.
Kashyap is not the only delight for the Indians and the mixed doubles duo of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa also registered win after recovering from a slump. The Indian duo outclassed Chinese Taipei’s Wang Chi-Lin and Lee Chia Hsin 21-16 19-21 21-14 in the first round of the main draw. They will face another Taiwanese pair of Lee Yang and Hsu Ya Ching.
“It has been tough few years for me with injuries. This year I suffered a stress fracture in my right leg fibula bone after the Austrian Challenge which took me two months to recover. I missed almost four tournaments in this period,” Kashyap said.
“I had entered Thailand Open, Singapore Open and Russia tournaments in May. I had a couple of good matches in Thailand and the very next week in Singapore had a jerk in my back which turned out to be an annular tear. As a result, I had to concede my matches in Singapore and Russia,” Kashyap elaborated.
But Kashyap is happy that he could recover and play the European circuit. “After another 8 weeks of rest and rehab and another 3 weeks of training I finally could play the European circuit events. I lost in the quarterfinals of Dutch Open and another quarterfinal finish at SaarLorLux Open. These results although not satisfying, I am just happy to be back on the circuit and playing some tournaments. Now the aim is to stay fit and get higher in ranking gradually.”
Meanwhile, Kashyap had also donned the coach’s hat guiding Saina Nehwal at the French Open and Denmark Open.
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