COVID-19 hit seven Indian players, including men’s top seed K. Srikanth and doubles specialist Ashwini Ponnappa, and forced 15 withdrawals across events of the $400,000 India Open badminton here early on Thursday.
Mithun Manjunath is the other affected singles player while the rest — Ritika Thaker, Treesa Jolly, Simran Singhi and Khushi Gupta — play doubles.
The doubles partners of these players — N. Sikki Reddy P. Gayathri Gopi Chand, Akshan Shetty and Kavya Gupta also had to withdraw.
In addition, Dhruv Kapila and Akshan Shetty — the doubles partners of Sikki and Simran — were also forced to pull out.
Further, Dhruv’s men’s doubles partner M.R. Arjun and Akshan’s partner Utkarsh Arora also had to follow suit.
The nationwide rise in Covid cases has also cast a shadow over the hosting of the $150,000 Syed Modi India International from January 18 to 23 at Lucknow and the low-key inaugural edition of the $75,000 Odisha Open from January 25 to 30 at Cuttack.
