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India Open Superseries
Star Indian shuttler HS Prannoy on Thursday expressed his 'irritation' on facing fellow Indians in early stages of a competition after training against the same opponents, while admitting that not much can be done about it. In the first round of India Open Super 750, after Lakshya Sen and Priyanshu Rajawat played against each other, Prannoy locked horns with Rajawat on Thursday. In fact, a lot of shuttlers from Japan, Chinese Taipei and China have faced each other in the ongoing tournament which has a draw of 32. "It's always tough to play at 750 level, you're getting a draw like this, where three Indians are in one quarter. It's a little irritating, to be honest," Prannoy said after he reached the quarterfinals here. "But that's how the draws are sometimes and you have to take it like that. This totally depends on tournament software. We have seen a lot of Chinese also playing the first two rounds." Last year Prannoy and Lakshya had faced each other in the early stages of Malaysi
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty are "more hungry" after a runner-up finish at the Malaysia Open Super 1000 and would look to go one better at next week's India Open as they aim to claim their first silverware of the new season. The Indian pair's dream run at the Malaysia Open ended with a narrow 21-9 18-21 17-21 loss in the men's doubles final to world No. 1 Chinese Liang Wei keng and Wang Chang here on Sunday. The Asian Games gold medallists will be one of the top contenders for the India Open Super 750 crown beginning on Tuesday at the IG Stadium in New Delhi. "We want to do well in our home country next week, so we don't want to relax with this, we are more hungry and next week also we want to do well in front our home crowd," Satwik said after finishing second best at the first event of the year. Chirag added: "We obviously could have played a lot better towards the end. I think what's important is to look at the positives also, we have played some good badminton here