Birmingham:
Ace Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal defeated defending champion Nozomi Okuhara of Japan to enter the second round of the All England Open badminton championships.
Eight seeded Saina defeated Okuhara 21-15 21-14 late last night to improve her head-to-head record to 6-1 against her Japanese opponent.
Besides Saina, Rio Olympic silver medallist PV Sindhu also made winning start and dominated from start to finish to drub 33rd ranked Denmark's Mette Poulsen 21-10 21-11 in her first round women's singles match.
In the men's singles, H S Prannoy came from a game down to beat Qiao Bin 17-21 22-20 21-19, but it was curtains forKidambi Srikanth as he lost to Zhao Junpeng of China 19-2121-19 12-21.
While Sindhu will face Indonesia's Dinar Dyah Ayustine in the second round, Saina will be up against Fabienne Deprez of Germany. Prannoy will face a tough opponent in the seventh seedHouwei Tian of China.
In the qualifiers earlier, the Verma brothers -- Saurabh and Sameer -- lost in the opening round, while Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy won the first match before losing in the second round, failing to make the main draw.
Sameer, who had reached the finals at Hong Kong Open, lost 17-21 12-21 to Japan's Kazumasa Sakai, while National champion Sourabh's fight against Anthony Sinisuka Ginting ofIndonesia ended with a 10-21 21-14 20-22 loss.
Ashwini and Sikki defeated England combination of LaurenSmith and Sarah Walker 21-17 16-21 24-22 in the first round and then lost 15-21 21-18 18-21 to Swiss Nadia Fankhauser andSannatasah Saniru of Malaysia in the second round.
