India’s campaign in the badminton events got off to the expected start, with all three singles exponents—Lakshya Sen, HS Prannoy and PV Sindhu—and the crack men’s doubles combination of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty notching up comfortable victories, but the women’s doubles pairing of Ashwini Ponnappa and Tanisha Crasto coming a cropper at the hands of Koreans Kim So Yeong and Kong Hee Yong.

Germany’s Fabian Roth, ranked 82nd in the world, gave Prannoy a bit of a scare in the opening game of their Group K encounter on the Porte de la Chapelle courts in Paris. The towering 6’3” German, basically a journeyman on the international badminton circuit, used his height and long reach to constantly attack the net and move the shuttle into the corners where Prannoy, just a mite slow after his recent attack of chikungunya, was caught off-balance.