Hyderabad, Aug 10 - Hosts India suffered its first loss when in-form Rupesh Kumar and Thomas Sanave went down to Japanese Kenichi Hayakawa and Kenta Kazuno in a close battle in the men's doubles first round of the World Badminton Championships at the Balayogi Stadium at the Gachibowli here Monday.

The Indian duo put up a tough fight against the 14th seed Japanese pair, but went down 13-21, 21-23 in 39 minutes.

In the singles, defending champion Lin Dan faced no problem in getting past Israel's Misha Zilberman 21-9, 21-11, in the first round, while Danish World No.3 Peter Gade also sailed past Ukraine's Valeriy Atrashchenkov 21-11, 21-16.

It was veteran Dicky Palyama of the Netherlands, who created a flutter, as he upset Chinese Bao Chunlai 21-18, 21-14 to advance to the second round.

India had high hopes from the world No.18 doubles pair of Rupesh and Thomas, who recently won the New Zealand Open and were runner-up in Australian Open. But the duo squandered a lot of opportunities. They were leading 20-16 in the second game, but failed to clinch any of the four game points.

'It was not our day,' Rupesh said. 'We did not get a start. The feeling was not there and also there was lot of drift. We did not get used to the conditions.'

'After winning the New Zealand Grand Prix we were high on confidence. We beat a Japanese pair in the final and today our opponents were also of the same level.

'We almost pulled it off, but for some silly errors. We were leading in the second game and we should have held on to the advantage but we lost out because of a lapse in concentration,' he added.