Birmingham, Mar 17 (PTI) India's ace shuttlers Kidami Srikanth and Parupalli Kashyap suffered early exits in the prestigious All England Badminton Championships, losing their respective opening round men's singles matches here on Wednesday.

However, the Indian duo of Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy got the better of Thailand's Benyapa Aimsaard and Nuntakarn Aimsaard in straight games, 21-14 21-12, in a women's doubles match that lasted 30 minutes.

Seeded eight, Srikanth lost to Ireland's unseeded player Nguyen Nhat 11-21 21-15 12-21 on the opening day of the tournament.

His match lasted exactly an hour as the player from Ireland came back strongly after losing the second game against the Indian.

Commonwealth Games gold medallist Kashyap went down in straight games to top seeded Japanese Kento Momota 13-21 2-22 in 42 minutes.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)