File photo of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty.© AFP
India’s top men’s doubles pair Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty assured a men’s doubles medal at the Badminton Asia Championships after 52 years after outplaying Indonesia’s experienced duo Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan in the quarterfinals on Friday. The Indian pair won by 21-11 21-12. Rankireddy and Shetty now face Chinese Taipei’s Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin in the last four encounter. Earlier, two-time Olympic medallist PV Sindhu squandered a game lead to go down against second seed An Se Young of Korea in the women’s singles quarterfinals.
Sindhu, seeded eighth, pocketed the first game 21-18 but looked completely off colour in the next two games which she lost 5-21 9-21 to hand Young a place in the semifinals.
The other Indian hope, eight seed HS Prannoy, too bowed out in the men’s singles quarterfinals after conceding his match midway against Kanta Tsuneyama of Japan.
Prannoy was trailing 11-21 9-13 when he retired due to an injury.
Earlier in the day, qualifiers Rohan Kapoor and N Sikki Reddy battled hard before losing a tough three-game mixed doubles contest against Dejan Ferdinansyah and Gloria Emanuelle Widjaja of Indonesia.
The Indian pair fought for one hour and five minutes before losing the quarterfinal 18-21 21-19 15-21.
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