After 4 title wins, Lakshya Sen makes his presence felt in race to Tokyo Olympics

India’s young shuttler Lakshya Sen has had an incredible year so far. On Sunday, he won the Scottish Open men’s singles title by beating Brazil’s Ygor Coelho and it was his fourth title in the last five tournaments he has played.

This win helped him to break into the top 40 of the BWF ranking. He is now placed at 39th and looks set to climb further up the ladder.

In fact, Lakshya’s performance has been far superior than the other established Indian senior men’s shuttlers. None of them have been able to win any major title this year. It’s only the Women shuttlers who have been able to restore some respect to the country’s reputation in this sport. PV Sindhu won the BWF World Championships in August and Saina Nehwal also won the Indonesia Masters back in January.
 

Lakshya, who has been a silver medalist in the youth Olympics, has won two Super 100 tournaments which include the Dutch Open and SaarLorLux Open. Sourav Verma is the only one other than Lakshya who has won two Super 100s this year. Being in such fine form, Lakshya looks all set to make his mark in the Syed Modi International Super 300 which kicked off in Lucknow on Tuesday.

The 18-year-old had started the year with a World ranking of 109. His runner-up finish in the Polish Open International Challenge earlier in the year pushed him up to 76 in the ranking. And now after four title wins in the last few months, his ranking stands at 39.

Lakshya is the seventh best in the road to Tokyo ranking at present. Sai Praneeth is placed at eighth and the next best Indian in the ranking is P Kashyap placed at 20th. It remains to be seen whether Lakshya is able to make it into the top 16– gives two Olympic quotas in singles– with six more months remaining.

Written by: Prasenjit Dey