The Hindu : Sport / Badminton : Tough draw for Aparna

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 05, 2005

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Sport - Badminton

Tough draw for Aparna

BANGALORE, MARCH 4. It is a tough draw for the National women's champion, Aparna Popat, in her opening match of the Yonex All-England badminton championship, which gets underway at Birmingham on March 8. Aparna runs into fourth seed, Zhou Mi of China in the second round, after getting a bye in the first round.

The Indian No. 2, Trupti Murgunde, plays Yuan Wemyss of Scotland in her first round tie. In the men's section, Nikhil Kanetkar meets Michael Christensen of Denmark while Chetan Anand takes on Kendrick Lee of Singapore and Abhinn Shyam Gupta is slated to meet a qualifier. The Indian doubles pair, Sanave Thomas and Rupesh Kumar face Jeong Jun Bum and Lee Hong Dae of Korea in the first round.

The 2001 All-England champion, Pullela Gopi Chand and National champion Anup Sridhar will play qualifying round matches and the Indian women's pair, Shruti Kurien and Jwala Gutta are scheduled to play in the qualifying rounds.

The defending champion, Lin Dan of China is the top seed in the men's section, which has five past champions as seeds. Peter Gade, Chen Hong, Xia Xuanze and Hafiz Hashim are seeded second, third, fourth and fifth respectively.

World and Olympic Champion Zhang Ning is the top seed in the women's singles and she is fancied to meet France's second seed Pi Hongyan in the final. Xie Xingfang of China with four consecutive 2004 titles under her belt from Denmark, Germany, China and Indonesia, is the third seed and certainly the one to watch.

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