India’s PV Sindhu started her 2020 Tokyo Olympics campaign with a dominant performance in her Group J match on Sunday. She dispatched her Israeli opponent Ksenia Polikarpova in straight games. The match that lasted 28 minutes, saw the Indian notch up a 21-7, 21-10 victory.

The 26-year-old Indian, seeded sixth, beat the 58th ranked Polikarpova in a lop-sided opening match.

The world number seven Indian will next play Hong Kong’s world number 34 Cheung Ngan Yi in the group stage.

From the word go, the Rio Games silver medallist was on attacking mode and forced her opponent to make unforced errors. Although the Indian had a shaky start. After lagging 3-4 in the opening game, she ran away with the game by taking an 11-5 lead at the break.

The Indian won 13 straight points, blowing away her opponent, who clearly struggled to make the most of the opportunities.

Sindhu’s straight and cross-court smashes coupled with her drop shots were too much to handle for the Israeli competitor. Sindhu sealed the first game in her favour when Polikarpova missed a shot.

Polikarpova, who was playing with a strapped knee, continued to struggle with her strokes as Sindhu opened up a 9-3 lead in the second game and then entered the mid-interval with a massive seven-point advantage.

It was business as well after the break, with Sindhu riding on the errors of her opponent.

At one stage, Sindhu had 13 match points but squandered three of them, as her Israeli counterpart touched the double-digit mark. But it was only a matter of time that the Indian completed the match and showed that she is Olympic-ready.

On Saturday, the Indian men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty shocked the world number duo of Yang Lee and Chi-Lin Wang of Chinese Taipei in a thrilling group A match.

However, B Sai Praneeth jeopardised his qualification to the knockout stage after going down to world number 47, Misha Zilberman of Israel, in a men’s singles group D match.