BWF World Badminton Championships: Satwik-Chirag enters quarters

COPENHAGEN: India's top men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty struggled their way into the quarterfinals at the BWF World Badminton Championships even as the women's combine of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand crashed out to China's Chen Qing Chen and Jia Yi Fan in the pre-quarterfinals on Thursday.

The second-seeded Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, the Commonwealth Games men's doubles gold medallists, overcame the sixth-seeded Indonesians Leo Rolly Carnando and Daniel Marthin of Indonesia in three games, winning 21-15, 19-21, 21-9 in 61 minutes. A bronze medallist in this event, the World No.2 Indian pair is hoping to win their maiden World Championship title this time and overcame a loss in a tight second game to pre-vail over the Indonesians.

Hopes, however, ended for the women's doubles pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand, which too made its mark at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham by winning a maiden bronze medal. Treesa and Gayatri lost their pre-quarterfinal match to China's top-seeded pair of Chen Qing Chen and Jia Yi Fan 14-21, 9-21 in just 42 minutes at Court 1 at the Royal Arena in the Denmark capital.

In the men's doubles pre-quarterfinals, Satwik and Chirag took control from 12-10 in the first game and surged to a 17-11 lead. They went on to win the first game 21-15 to make a bright start in the match.

In the second game, after the lead changed hands a few times initially, the Indians led 8-5 and then extended it to 11-8 before the Indonesians came back strongly to level scores and take a 14-11 lead. Satwik and Chirag nar-rowed the gap in the neck-and-neck battle and levelled the scores at 17-17. The scores were tied again at 18-all and 19-19 before the Indonesians won two successive points to win the game 21-19.

In the decider, the Indian pair jumped to a 3-1 lead and though the Indonesians levelled scores at 4-4, Satwik and Chirag opened a two-point lead and from 7-6 won the five successive points to take a 12-6 lead. They main-tained their advantage and went on to win the game 21-9 to win the match and now await the winner of the match between Denmark's Anders Skaarup Rasmussen-Kim Ashtrup and Malayia's seventh-seeded Yi Ee Teo and Yew Siri Ong. IANS

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