Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty assured themselves of a medal at the Badminton Asian Championships in Dubai on Friday. It will be India's first medal in men's doubles after 52 years. Attacking relentlessly, the duo ousted higher ranked Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan of Indonesia 21-11, 21-12 in the men's doubles quarterfinals.
PV Sindhu, HS Prannoy and the mixed doubles pair of Rohan Kapoor and Sikki Reddy lost in the quarterfinals. The world No. 6 Indian duo despatched their world No. 3 opponents in 28 minutes. From 8-8 in the first game, they moved to 16-8. In the second game too, the Indians broke free from the 10th point. There were over a dozen smashes each in both the games.
Sindhu again failed to get past An Se Young and lost 18-21, 5-21, 9-21, Prannoy retired at 21-11, 13-9 after losing the first game to Kanta Tsuneyama of Japan. Rohan and Sikki went down to Dejan Ferndinansyah and Gloria Emanuelle Widjaja of Indonesia 18-21, 21-19, 15-21.
This is the sixth consecutive defeat for Sindhu against An. In fact, Sindhu won the first game for the first time against the Korean. However, An was too good in the next two. In the second game, An opened a 4-0 lead and raced to 15-3, giving no chance for Sindhu to recover. In the third game, An led 11-6 and soon made it 15-6.
The withdrawals of Treesa Jolly-Gayatri Gopichand and Prannoy should worry the Indian camp as the Sudirman Cup begins in a couple of weeks.
