China end India’s campaign

Gold Coast (Australia), May 26 

India’s campaign at the Sudirman Cup ended after they went down 0-3 against top seed and 10-time champions China in the quarterfinals of the mixed team championship here today. 

At the start of the tie, the mixed doubles pair of Ashwini Ponnappa and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy put up a gritty show against world No. 2 pair of Lu Kai and Huang Yaqiong before going down fighting 16-21 21-13 21-16 63 minutes.

In the men’s singles, K Srikanth was faced with an enormous task of taming Olympic champion Chen Long. In the 48-minute contest, Srikanth showed some spark but never really came close to threatening the supremacy of the Chinese. In the end, Srikanth lost 16-21 17-21, leaving India trailing 0-2 in the five-match rubber.

The young pair of Satwiksairaj and Chirag Sen then lost 9-21 11-21 to Fu Haifeng and Zhang Nan in the men’s doubles as China took an unassailable 3-0 lead. With the tie already decided, the remaining two matches — the women’s singles and doubles — became inconsequential.

China, who had lost only one of their 10 matches in the round-robin stage, dished out another superb performance to outwit the Indian shuttlers. In another quarterfinals, Japan beat Malaysia 3-1 to set-up a semifinal against China on Saturday. South Korea will take on Malaysia in the other last-four stage tie.  

Sindhu, meanwhile, said  that irrespective of the defeat, the team put up an “amazing show by reaching the knockouts”. “End of Sudirman Cup. Though we lost in the quarterfinals to China, it was an amazing show by Team India. Never mind guys, let’s come back even more stronger,” she posted on Instagram. — PTI