Thomas & Uber Cup: Men’s team out of Thomas Cup

Aarhus (Denmark), October 15

The Indian men’s badminton team suffered a 3-1 defeat to Denmark in the quarterfinals to bow out of the Thomas Cup here today.

Only the pair of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy could post a win for the team which made it to the Thomas Cup quarterfinals for the first time since 2010.

A struggling Kidambi Srikanth was outplayed by his world No. 2 opponent and Tokyo Olympics gold medallist Viktor Axelsen, who won the first match 21-12 21-13 in 38 minutes. Srikanth trailed all through the match.

The world No. 10 men’s doubles pair of Shetty and Rankireddy brought India back into the tie with a three-game win over the duo of Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen. The Indians won 21-15 17-21 21-18 in one hour and 12 minutes.

Denmark, however, regained the lead after world No. 3 Anders Antonsen easily beat B Sai Praneeth 21-8 21-15 in the second singles in 45 minutes.

The pair of MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila then lost 16-21 9-21 to Mathias Christiansen and Frederik Sogaard in the second doubles as Denmark sealed the tie.

In the group stage, India had defeated the Netherlands and Tahiti by identical margins of 5-0 before losing 4-1 to China.

The Indian women’s team had also crashed out of the Uber Cup after losing 3-0 to Japan. — PTI