Hyderabad, May 3 (IANS) India’s star badminton player PV Sindhu recently attended the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 match between Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium on Sunday.

Commonwealth gold medalist Sindhu was accompanied by her husband Venkata Datta Sai. The couple was donning orange colour dress and was seen supporting the home team Sunrisers Hyderabad along with the franchise owner Kavya Maran.

Sindhu recently took part in the Uber Cup, where India’s campaign ended after a defeat to China in their final Group A fixture.

India came up with a spirited performance against China but could not avoid a 0-5 loss. Facing a must-win situation to stay in the hunt for a quarterfinal berth, former world champion PV Sindhu returned to play the first singles and had her chances against world no 2 Wang Zhi Yi.

Sindhu led Wang for most of the third game and even opened up an 18-12 lead in the decider. The Chinese then took seven consecutive points to take the lead and wrapped up the match a couple of points later.

India’s other two singles players – Isharani Baruah and Devika Sihag – also built pressure on their much fancied Chinese opponents but could not carve out a win.

Isharani lost to former Olympic Champion Chen Yu Fei 20-22, 13-21, while Devika went down 21-19, 17-21, 10-21 against Xu Wen Jing.

India’s scratch women’s doubles combination of Tanisha Crasto and Kavipriya Selvam raised hopes of winning a point when they took the opening game against Luo Xu Min and Zhang Shu Xian, but ended on the losing side of a 10-21, 21-12, 21-19 score line.

Speaking of the match, SRH won the toss and elected to bat against KKR. SRH have made two changes in their playing XI. Nitish Kumar Reddy is out due to illness, and Smaran Ravichandran is making his debut for the team. While Harshal Patel is replacing Harsh Dubey.

KKR have also made two changes as Finn Allen and Manish Pandey comes in place of Tim Seifert and Ramandeep Singh.

–IANS

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