Saina, rest of Indian squad leave for Thailand

New Delhi: The Indian badminton team and support staff left for Thailand on Sunday to compete in two back-to-back BWF World Tour Super 1000 tournaments and the BWF World Tour Finals. The team includes Olympic hopefuls Saina Nehwal, Kidambi Srikanth and B Sai Praneeth while world champion P.V. Sindhu will be travelling from England where she has been training since October.

The first Thailand Open will be held from January 12 to 17 while the second is scheduled for January 19 to 24. The World Tour Finals then starts on January 27 and will end on January 31.

While Srikanth competed in the Denmark Super 750 in October, it will be a first tournament since the coronavirus-induced break for the rest of the players in the squad.

The team also consists of star men's doubles pair Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, and doubles players Ashwini Ponappa and N. Sikki Reddy. H.S. Prannoy, Parupalli Kashyap, Sameer Verma, Dhruv Kapila, and Manu Attri are the rest of the players in the team.

Singles foreign coaches Agus Dwi Santoso and Park Tae Sang and doubles coach Dwi Kristiawan are travelling with the players along with support staff consisting of Kiran Challagundla, Johnson, Evangelina Baddam and M. Srikanth. (IANS)