Tokyo Paralympic medallist off to a great start in Paris, Sukant Kadam also wins first match

Tokyo 2020 silver medallist Suhas Lalinakere Yathiraj won his first match in the group stage on the opening day of badminton duels at the Paralympic Games here on Thursday. Another Indian Sukant Kadam, competing in the men's singles SL4 category, also won his first match. An IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre of the 2007 batch, Yathiraj has served as district magistrate in Gautam Buddh Nagar and Prayagraj. He began the day with a defeat in the mixed doubles SL3-SU5 event, falling to Palak Kohli. The combination went down 0-2 (14-21, 17-21) to country people Nitesh Kumar and Thulasimathi Murugesan at Court 4 of La Chapelle Arena in the French capital.

But he came back a few hours later and made a great start to his campaign on a high by trouncing Indonesia's Hikmat Ramdani 21-7, 21-5 in just 22 minutes in his first match in a Group A fixture of the ongoing games. South Korea's Kyung Hwan Shin is the third player in the preliminary Group A. Yathiraj will have to beat the Korean in order to move on, as only the group winners advance to the semi-finals. In SL4, Sukant Kadam was also victorious in his first group game. Representing India, he beat Tarun Dhillon in their respective groups. Yathiraj is seeded Number One in his category.

Kadam started his campaign in style with a hard-fought three-game win over fourth seed—Malaysia's Mohd Amin Burhanuddin—of Group B. The Indian young gun outplayed the Malaysian player 2-1 (17-21, 21-15, 22-20) in a 61-minute match. The third individual in the team is Siripong Teamrom from Thailand. 30-year-old Tarun Dhillon, from India, recorded a 2-0 victory in this match (21-17, 21-19) against Rogerio Junior Xavier de Oliveira of Brazil. Tarun had played in the Tokyo Paralympics.

India's hopes in the women's singles SL3 class began on a soggy note with both Mansi Joshi and Mandeep Kaur losing their first-round matches. First-time Paralympic Games representative Mansi, 35, faced top seed Konita Ikhtiar Syakuroh of Indonesia in her opening Group A match and went down fighting 1-2. While Manasi had actually claimed the first of these games, she then dropped the next two to bow out of the match, the scoreline reading 21-16, 13-21, 18. She put up some stiff fight in the third game but again could not go far. Ukraine's third player is Oxana Kozyna.

In the mixed doubles SH6 category, India's Sivarajan Solaimalai and Nithya Sri Sumathi Sivan went down 0-2 (21-23, 11-21) against Miles Krajewski and Simon Jesse of the USA in their opening match yesterday. They have to defeat this group's third pairing, Natthapong Meichai, to stay alive in the race to make it to the next stage, as two pairs from the group will qualify for the semi-finals.