Indian shuttler Kidambri Srikanth started his Olympic campaign in superb fashion, breezing past Lino Muzon of Mexico in straight games in the opening match of Group H in the men's singles event here
Rio de Janeiro: Indian shuttler Kidambri Srikanth started his Olympic campaign in superb fashion, breezing past Lino Muzon of Mexico in straight games in the opening match of Group H in the men's singles event here.
The only Indian to qualify in the men's singles event, Srikanth won 21-11, 21-17 in 41 minutes here at the Pavilion 4 of Rio Centro on Thursday.
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Srikanth will be playing his next match against Henri Hurskainen of Sweden on Sunday.
In few early exchanges in the first game, the Indian shuttler was prevailing 7-5 due to few unforced errors from the Mexican before Kidamdi stepped up his game, attacking strongly to take 10 points on the trot to build up a 15-10 lead.
With the combination of his diagonal and down the line smashes creating plenty of problems for the Mexican, Srikanth easily clinched the first game by a 21-11 margin in 16 minutes.
In the second game, the former world No. 3 Indian started to loosen up a little, going up 11-9 at the mid-game interval.
After the mid-game interval, Muzon tried to stage a strong comeback. He effectively countered Srikanth's smashes and started dominating the court with his long smashes, building up a 16-13 lead.
At one point it seemed that it will be difficult for the 23-year-old Guntur lad to return into the game, but Srikanth kept his cool and played few tight spinning net shots to grab the nail biting second game in 25 minutes.
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