Fancied shuttlers have it easy

Former All England champion Pulella Gopichand led the march of the top players into the second round in the Late Hari Chand Memorial All India prize-money badminton championship, which got under way in Kanour on Wednesday.

Gopichand crushed G D Yuvraj Kumar of Tamil Nadu 7-0, 7-1, 7-0 in a totally one-sided encounter to move into the second round.

Earlier, Chetan Anand of ONGC defeated Anil Sundaram 7-5, 7-2, 7-3 while his India teammate Siddharth Jain took a little longer to beat Rutupurwa Kulkarni of Maharashtra 7-4, 7-2, 5-7, 7-1.

In the men's doubles, Jaisel P Ismail and Jaison Xavier (PSCB) beat Rohan Kapoor and Jivi Vergese (Rly) 7-0, 7-1, 7-3; Ajay Kanwar (Delhi) and Sachin Ratti (Rly) beat Ajay Mathur and Mahesh Sharma (UP) 7-1, 7-4, 7-1; Vijay Lanchy (Mah) and B N Thomas Kurien (CRSB) beat M Palekar (Rlys) and S Nagraaj (AP) 7-2, 6-8, 7-0, 4-7, 7-3.