Men’s poor run continues as HS Prannoy, Kidambi Srikanth ousted at Swiss Open

It has been a torrid European swing for India’s men’s singles players who continued their poor run at St Jakobshalle a week after the All England. Lless and yielding, the three defeats on Thursday had none of the fight that Kidambi Srikanth or HS Prannoy are capable of, and no spark that national champion Mithun Manjunath ought to display after a step up on to the international circuit.
India hasn’t won a singles Super 750+ title in many seasons, but even a Super 300 like Swiss Open seems to be proving difficult for the shuttlers now. And things got dire in Basel when between them, Lee Cheuk Yiu of Hong Kong and Chro Popov of France accounted for four Indians in two days — Lakshya Sen and Kidambi Srikanth; Kiran George and Prannoy respectively.
The tall Frenchman, ranked World No 40, played a rather basic game with some exorbitant smashes thrown in, but it was a lacklustre Prannoy who had no answers defensively, and no attacking verve that tends to be the staple of his game on the day. It came a day after the Indian World No 9 had taken out Shi Yuqi, the All England final, and the turnaround time between the match last night and the afternoon game the next day was way too little to recover.
But he ended up bruised 21-8, 21-8 in quick time too, offering little resance. Struggling to find his length, the rallies were short and drab and lacked the usual punch that Prannoy brings to a fight. It was short work, done and dusted in 36 minutes, and Prannoy didn’t lead the score even once. Little recovery time – if not a niggle could be the only explanation for how lless the Indian was.
In another second-round match, Kidambi Srikanth frittered four set points rather inexplicably and then never recovered to lose 22-20, 21-17 against Lee Cheuk Yiu. It has become an unfortunate recurring pattern with Srikanth – something no coach might be able to solve – but he contrived to lose from being 20-16 up in the first set.
There were errors of course as six straight points went to Lee, but Srikanth also chased down shuttles that were sailing wide, and over-hit a smash as Lee went on a 6-point flurry to hop away to the opener.

The shift in momentum at the end of the first had a wretched effect on Srikanth, who continued being error-prone just minutes after looking in control of progressing with winners after 40 minutes. The second set didn’t seem in his range as he trailed for the most part and finally went down in straight sets in yet another tournament.
Srikanth went into the break trailing 6-11, but weaved in a few winners to come to within 10-11 of Lee. The Hong Kong shuttler, ranked 19, one place above Srikanth, however, had a handle on speed and blitzed through points, inducing errors.
Stringing together five wins in five days seems like an almighty struggle when converting even one of the four match points available is made to look so terribly tough. But a men’s singles title seems like a steep upclimb from the level where the shuttlers are operating right now. It’s a far cry from 2021 when India picked silver and bronze at the World Championships and had three of the eight quarterfinals.
The collective slump though is inexplicable, and the consency of putting together five wins is eluding every one of them now. Consency over playing back-to-back weeks seems to be eluding everyone on the circuit too.
Mithun Manjunath who didn’t play Birmingham, too led 12-8 in the opener but was too leaden-footed – especially in his defense on the backhand – to trouble Chia Hao Lee (World no 42) of Taiwan and went on to lose 21-19, 21-10 in 39 minutes. Chia simply hit the next gear in the second, after he parried away World No 46 Mithun’s limited challenge in the first.