JAKARTA: Top Indian shuttlers PV Sindhu and Lakshya Sen entered the quarterfinals of USD 500,000 Indonesia Masters badminton tournament after securing straight-game wins in their respective round-of-16 matches here on Thursday.
Lakshya, a 2021 world championships bronze medallist, prevailed over Hong Kong China’s Jason Gunawan 21-10, 21-11 in a contest that lasted a little over half an hour.
The 24-year-old from Almora, who won the Australian Open last year, will meet Thailand’s rising talent Panitchaphon Teeraratsakul, who knocked out Paris bronze medallist Lee Zii Jia of Malaysia.
Sindhu, a two-time Olympic-medallist, notched up a 21-19, 21-18 triumph over familiar foe Line Hojmark Kjaerfeldt of Denmark in her pre-quarterfinal that took 43 minutes to wind up.
This was Sindhu’s fifth win over the Dane in their six clashes so far.
Sindhu will next be up against tournament top seed and world number four Chen Yu Fei of China in the Super 500 event.
Sindhu and Fei have faced each other 13 times so far and the latter holds a slight 7-6 edge overall.
The Indian’s last win over Fei came back in 2019 and she would be eager to improve that record.
Later in the day, former world No. 1 Kidambi Srikanth, a 2021 world championships silver medallist, was too erratic to pose any challenge, going down 11-21, 10-21 to Chinese Taipei’s Chou Tien Chen in a lop-sided pre-quarterfinals.
In women’s singles, Anmol Kharb showed a lot of heart to challenge former world champion Nozomi Okuhara before going down 21-16, 14-21, 11-21 in 56 minutes.
Men’s doubles pair of Hariharan Amsakarunan and MR Arjun, who secured several titles, including the Al Ain Masters and Turkiye International Challenge in 2025, produced a gallant fight before losing 17-21, 21-9, 16-21 to third seeded and world number 6 Malaysians Man Wei Chong and Kai Wun Tee in 54 minutes.