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\nTokyo, Sep 1 (PTI) World number one shuttler Pramod Bhagat made an impressive start to his campaign in the men’s singles competition but young Palak Kohli endured a tough day at the Tokyo Paralympics, here on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Bhagat, the reigning world champion, outwitted fellow Indian Manoj Sarkar 21-10 21-23 21-9 in his men’s singles group A class SL3 opener that lasted 56 minutes.<\/p>\n
The 33-year-old, who had contracted polio during his childhood, will face Ukraine’s Oleksandr Chyrkov on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Manoj too will clash with Chyrkov on Friday.<\/p>\n
“Manoj Sarkar pushed me to the limits. He played really well and we know each other’s game very well. We had some good rallies. I am happy with the way I went ahead with my game, obviously these are initial matches and I am getting used to the arena,” Bhagat said.<\/p>\n
“I am in a good headspace. Chyrkov is also good and I hope I put up a good show tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
Earlier, Kohli had a difficult day in office as she suffered defeats in both her women’s singles and mixed doubles matches.<\/p>\n
Up against Japan’s Ayako Suzuki, a gold medallist at the 2009 World Championships, the 19-year-old Kohli lost 4-21 7-21 in just 19 minutes in a group A women singles class SU5 match.<\/p>\n
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Kohli, whose left arm is under-developed since birth, will next take on Turkey’s Zehra Baglar on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Kohli and Bhagat had earlier gone down fighting against second seeds Lucas Mazur and Faustine Noel in the mixed doubles group B opener here.<\/p>\n
Bhagat and Kohli, competing in SL3-SU5 class, lost 9-21 21-15 19-21 against the French team in 43 minutes at the Yoyogi national stadium.<\/p>\n
Talking about the match, Bhagat said,”We started very slow, we had our chances which we didn’t capitalise. Our second game is on Friday which is a do or die game and am sure we will put up a much better fight and make sure we win the game.”<\/p>\n
The Indian pair found the going tough initially as it lagged 5-11 at the interval. Things didn’t change much after the breather as the French duo zoomed ahead and quickly pocketed the opening game.<\/p>\n
In the second game, the Indian duo gave a better account of themselves as they fought tooth and nail and earned a slender two-point lead at 13-11.<\/p>\n
Mazur and Noel grabbed a point but the Indian pair reeled off seven straight points to reach the game points. Their opponent saved two points before Bhagat and Kohli roared back into the contest.<\/p>\n
In the decider, the second seeds opened up a 13-9 lead but Bhagat and Kohli fought their way back to take a 15-14 lead.<\/p>\n
However, Mazur and Noel soon grabbed lead and eventually edged out the Indian pair.<\/p>\n
Thailand pair of Siripong Teamarrom and Saensupa Nipada is the third team in the group B.<\/p>\n
Kohli will also be participating in women’s doubles (SL3-SU5) with Parul Parmar.<\/p>\n
SL3 classification is for athletes with lower limb impairment, while SU5 refers to athletes with upper limb impairment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tokyo, Sep 1 (PTI) World number one shuttler Pramod Bhagat made an impressive start to his campaign in the men’s singles competition but young Palak Kohli endured a tough day at the Tokyo Paralympics, here on Wednesday. Bhagat, the reigning world champion, outwitted fellow Indian Manoj Sarkar 21-10 21-23 21-9 in his men’s singles group […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-170699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}