Opportunities taken and lost; battles with self and opponents and drift and form – just another day on the HSBC BWF World Tour.

Anmol Kharb and Malvika Bansod are separated by just two spots in the BWF World Rankings. Their career trajectories are different; yet, in terms of battling recent crises of confidence, they might well be swimming in the same waters. At the end of the first round matches today at the TOYOTA Thailand Open 2026, one of them was left in tears, ruing a missed window of opportunity; the other could savour her survival skills and the prospect of one more match. Every player has a unique story, but sometimes, briefly, different stories intersect.

World No.48 Kharb, looking for the one win that would have injected confidence after months of disappointing results, was heading for a win over world No.4 Chen Yu Fei – leading 11-2 at the break in the third and Chen looking a shadow of herself, before the match slipped the Indian’s grasp in a heap of errors.

How much of Kharb’s loss from that dominant position was down to lack of confidence? The confidence that seems to have deserted her over a year of disappointing results?

Chen herself was all praise for her 19-year-old opponent, calling her “very patient, very strong” and surmising that it was the strong drift that had undone the Indian.

In any case, it wasn’t just another loss for Kharb. To have Chen’s name on her record would have been something to cherish in the best of times; but now urgently so for Kharb, searching for a result that could propel her onward. A win over a top 10 player was just what she’d needed. For someone who had early success in her career – she featured in India’s first Asian Team Championships triumph in 2024 – the losses have been dispiriting.

“It was not a great season in 2025 because of many first round exits,” Kharb said. “I don’t know what happened. Most of the times the draw was hard, and then when the draw was easy, I didn’t play well, or my body was not giving signs of winning. Or maybe I don’t know what was happening.

“I’m happy with my game but I’m just disappointed in the last points of the game that I’m not able to convert it to a win. It’s the same things over and over. I played the Thailand Masters and I lost the third game 21-19. I just need to play safer in the last points. I’m going for the lines, which is just unnecessary. So I just need to change my mindset.”

Then there was world No.50 Bansod, still on the mend from an ACL surgery to her left knee, who emerged from a rollercoaster of a contest against Zhang Wen Yu, saving four match points in the second game after Zhang had saved six of hers.

Like Kharb, Bansod is searching for confidence too, and she can feel it rise and fall even in the course of a single match.

“Every point that we have ups and downs, it (confidence) changes with the crowd, with the drift, with your own emotions, with the opponent stepping up, stepping down. So it has too many variables.”

Confidence has been hard to come by after she suffered an ACL injury at last year’s Indonesia Open. Back on the circuit within six months following surgery, it feels so different. Things she took for granted earlier now hold a different meaning altogether.

The recovery from the surgery “cannot be put in words. I mean the effort, the pain and disappointments, because you always compare yourself to what you were and you can see the gap is still too high. When I was coming back, I would see that the exercises, or the movements, which were so easy now felt so difficult that I used to wonder, how did I do it earlier? So that phase is really long and very taxing emotionally as well for the player, not just physically; but by God’s grace, I was able to fight all of those fears and come back again.”

She’s still finding her way back. She’s had five wins from 11 tournaments so far this year, and she holds a premium on each one.

“After a long time, I had a great win. Great, I would say, because it was a good fight from Zhang as well. And the conditions are really tough here. The drift is a little different on every court.

“After that injury phase as well, I had struggles, because, as Gill Clark says very rightly, you cannot buy confidence somewhere. You have to earn it. So in the process of earning it, you have to fail, and then you have to make amends, find solutions, and then implement them, and then gain confidence. So that that process takes some time. Maybe it depends from athlete to athlete, but for me, it took that period.”

And who should face her in the second round but Chen Yu Fei.

→ Results (Day 2)

→ Order of play (Day 3)