Gopichand romps into second round

All England champion Pulella Gopichand had an easy outing in his opening men's singles match at the XII World badminton championships in Seville, Spain, on Tuesday.

The sixth seeded India No. 1 beat Jens Roch of Germany, ranked 53rd in the world, 15-3, 15-8 in 40 minutes to set up a meeting with the qualifier Kevin Han of the United States in the next round.

Han got the better of Indonesian Johan Hadikusuma 8-15, 15-2, 15-4 in a match that lasted 62 minutes.

However, India's No. 2 shuttler Abhinn Shyam Gupta bowed out after losing his lost his first round match to top seed Roslin M Hashim of Malaysia 15-17, 5-15 in 56 minutes.

Gopichand won the first game rather easily but was made to fight in the second as Roch tried to make a fight of it after trailing 2-8. The German reduced the margin to 8-12, but that was as far as he could get as the Indian champion completed the formalities, getting the final points in quick time.

Abhinn Shyam Gupta matched the top seed in the first game and stretched the Malaysian to 15-15, before caving in at 15-17. However, he could not repeat the same performance in the next game and went down tamely after the Malaysian had established a 4-0 lead.

In the women's singles Manjusha Kanwar went down tamely to the third seed Marina Andrievskaya of Sweden 11-3, 11-3 in a match which lasted for just 16 minutes.

In the mixed doubles event, the Indian pair of Jaseel Ismail and Madhumita Bisht lost to the Indonesian pair of Bambang Suprianto and Minarti Timur 4-15, 8-15 in the first round of the main draw. The match lasted 30 minutes.

Another Indian pair in the mixed doubles, V Diju and P V V Lakshmi lost a tough match to the British pair of Graham Hurrell and Sarah Hardaker 8-15, 17-14, 11-15. The match lasted 55 minutes.

Related report
Manjusha Kanwar qualifies