NEW DELHI: As Lakshya Sen entered the court on Tuesday, the home crowd let out a huge roar at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium here. Barring a few upsets and a scare for former Olympic champ Chen Yu Fei of China, things had gone fairly as per script. Just before Lakshya's arrival on Court 1, the women's doubles combination of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gophichand had brought delight to the crowd with a handsome victory over 16th seeds Lauren Lam and Allison Lee of USA.
The crowd, naturally, were anticipating Lakshya — who was making his first appearance in the ongoing BWF World Championships — to match the vibe. He was the final player from the home nation to feature on Day 2 of the coveted competition. But the atmosphere soon turned grim as he struggled to find his rhythm.
Collins Filimon, his opening-round opponent from Austria, matched him shot-for-shot, making sharp returns before going on to take a sizeable lead. The crowd seemed stunned and so did Lakshya as he just couldn't figure what was being thrown at him. The windy conditions also didn't help as he would later reveal. Filimon, ranked World No 128, had no right to make this meeting a stiff contest, let alone take a lead against the former medallist. But to the horror of home fans, that's exactly what transpired. Collins, who stands six feet, three inches tall used his height advantage effectively to thwart Lakshya's flat shot attempts on numerous occasions. And after going a game down, Lakshya was in a serious threat to take the uninvited attention.
However, after the change of ends, Lakshya finally arrived. The fans also started finding their voice back. Lakshya was more purposeful, more clinical, forcing his opponent to err. It was one-way traffic after that as Lakshya wasted no time in closing out the match. Lakshya won 16-21, 21-8, 21-4 in 45 minutes. "First set, I was playing short. When I was trying to drive, I was not getting the points as he's quite tall and he was easily able to make the returns," he later told reporters. "In the second set, I tried to open up the game a bit more, play the lifts and engage him in rallies and I was able to play shots. I had a lot of errors in the first game and the game plan was a bit different. I changed a little bit in the second and third set and got the result."
There has been much talk about the playing conditions among players. With the playing hall being fairly large, some of the players have been taking time figuring out the drift. It was Lakshya's turn to face the windy conditions. "I started with the side that was a bit windy so it was hard to control the shuttle during the lifts."
The Indian will be hoping for more control in his play when he takes on Garret Tan next, who's ranked World No 92.
Happy start for debutant Unnati
Much earlier, Unnati Hooda, making her first-ever appearance in this event, also had some concerns but she did enough to beat Thet Htar Thuzar of Myanmar in the women's singles category. In the mixed doubles section, Rohan Kapoor and Ruthvika Shivani Gadde squandered one-game advantage to suffer a defeat against Jonathan Lai and Crystal Lai of Canada. Women's doubles pairing of Kavipriya Selvam and Simran Singhi, playing their second match in as many days, also lost.