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 in Dubai 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.
“Playing against senior players like them, there is no strategy. They can come back at any time; they have that mindset. So from starting onwards, we didn’t take it as pressure and we tried to enjoy every point.
They are like idols. We have been following them since a young age. When we took our racquets, they were already All England champions and world champions. So, we know how they play,” the Indian men’s doubles pair.
“But going into the match, we had a strategy with our coach and focused on the service receiving – they are very strong at it. After the injury, the way we are playing it’s a good sign for us,” it added.
Asked how proud he is with the achievement, Chirag Shetty said that the job is still not done.
“The job is still not done. We played some really good badminton today,” said Chirag.
Earlier, Former world champion PV Sindhu lost to world No. 2 An Se Young in her women’s singles quarter-final match at the Sheikh Rashid Bin Hamdan Indoor Hall. World No 11 Sindhu suffered her sixth straight defeat against the South Korean shuttler by going down 21-18, 5-21, 9-21.
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.
Meanwhile, India’s mixed doubles team of Rohan Kapoor-N Sikki Reddy also lost to the world No. 19 duo of Dejan Ferdinansyah-Gloria Emanuelle Widjaja from Indonesia 18-21, 21-19, 15-21 in the quarter-finals.
(With inputs from Agencies)
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