All England Open 2022: Lakshya Sen bows out to Viktor Axelsen

Lakshya Sen finishes the All England Open 2022 as the runner-up and bags the silver medal. The journey of the badminton event ended with Sen's heartbreaking loss from World No. 1 Viktor Axelsen. This was the third All England Open of the 20-year-old shuttler.

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Lakshya went down to 10-21 15-21 to the Olympic champion in the final clash of 53 minutes at the Barclaycard Arena. India is still waiting for the trophy for 21 years and this time it was so close to clinching it. The match started on a horrifying note where Sen went down to 0-6 in no time. Unfortunately, he could not recover from it. He failed to find openings as Axelsen always put him away from the net.

Lakshya said post-match, "I think the strategy was there. I played him last week but today he was looking solid in attack and defense as well. He was really patient and played a really good game. In the opening game, I committed a lot of errors, that cost me the game. I was there in the second game but again he was too solid for me to put the shuttle down."

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Lakshya is the fifth Indian after Prakash Nath (1947), Prakash Padukone (1980, 1981), Pullela Gopichand (2001), and Saina Nehwal (2015) to reach the finals of this distinguished event. He achieved this feat on Saturday.