Malaysia open: Satwik-Chirag trip over final hurdle
Kuala Lumpur, January 14
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty faltered at the finishing line to end their dream run at the Malaysia Open Super 1000 with a narrow loss in the men’s doubles final here today. Satwiksairaj and Chirag, the Asian Games gold medallists, squandered an 11-7 lead in the decider to go down 21-9 18-21 17-21 to world No. 1 Chinese Liang Wei keng and Wang Chang in the summit clash that saw both the pairs displaying some exquisite strokeplay.
“We are happy with how we played in the tournament but a little disappointed that we couldn’t control our nerves,” Satwiksairaj said. “We played under lot more pressure than them towards the end and made silly mistakes but they kept pressing us. Hopefully, we will take revenge next time,” he added.
“I was expecting it to be tough after the change of ends. We thought we should keep around a four-point lead and it would be nice going into the last stretch. Things were a bit here and there and then they were 12-12. The same thing happened in the Malaysia Open and All England Open last year,” he added.
It was the Indian pair’s fourth defeat against Liang and Wang, having lost three of their last four meetings — all in 2023. “It is always a tough fight against them. We are happy with what we wanted to achieve, we are happy we could go deep into the tournament,” Satwiksairaj said.
The only time the Indians emerged victorious was during their title-winning run at the Korea Open Super 500 last year. “The coach (Mathias Boe) said that we should keep the racquet up and move our feet. We knew they would come back, we should have been calmer and they played exceedingly well,” Chirag said.
It was yet another creditable performance from the Indian pair, which had claimed its maiden Super 1000 crown at the Indonesia Open last June. The duo will next compete at the India Open Super 750 tournament in New Delhi starting Tuesday. “We want to do well in our home country next week, so we don’t want to relax with this, we are hungry and next week also we want to do well in front our home crowd,” Satwiksairaj said.
