India’s Aakarshi Kashyap entered the women’s singles main draw at the Orleans Masters 2026 badminton tournament after winning both her qualifying matches on Tuesday.
Competing at the Palais des Sports in France, world No. 63 Aakarshi Kashyap began her campaign with a hard-fought 21-19, 17-21, 21-13 win over compatriot Shriyanshi Valishetty, 58th in the women’s singles rankings. The match lasted an hour and three minutes.
The Indian badminton player then went on to secure a 21-17, 21-19 victory against Lee Yu-Hsuan of Chinese Taipei and, with it, earned a passage into the main draw.
Aakarshi Kashyap will take on Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Yeo Jia Min of Singapore in the first round.
Sankar Subramanian, India’s sole men’s singles qualifier, failed to make the main round after losing 21-12, 21-18 against Olympic bronze medallist Lee Zii Jia of Malaysia.
Meanwhile, India’s women’s doubles challenge at the Orleans Masters ended early after Ashwini Bhat and Shikha Gautam conceded a walkover against Rui Hirokami and Sayaka Hobara of Japan in the opening round.
However, the Indian men’s doubles pair of MR Arjun and Hariharan Amsakarunan progressed to the second round after Jiří Král and Ondej Král of Czechia were forced to retire after conceding the opening game 21-10.
Men’s doubles duo Arjun Reddy Pochana and Achutaditya Rao Doddavarapu are set to take on Lai Po-Yu and Tsai Fu-Cheng of Chinese Taipei in their first round match later in the day.
Former world No. 1 Kidambi Srikanth, as well as youngsters Ayush Shetty, Malvika Bansod, Anmol Kharb and Tanvi Sharma will begin their campaigns at the BWF Super 300 tournament on Wednesday.
India’s top doubles duo Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Chirag Shetty, two-time Olympic medallist PV Sindhu and Paris 2024 semi-finalist Lakshya Sen have opted to skip the Orleans Masters.
read more: https://www.olympics.com/en/news/orleans-masters-2026-badminton-day-1-report-india
