India crashed out of the Sudirman Cup mixed team badminton championships after losing 0-5 to 10-time champions China in the second and final group match on Wednesday.
After going down 2-3 to Malaysia in its opening Group 1D match, India needed an extraordinary effort to get across the mighty Chinese but the shuttlers yet again produced a below-par performance to go down in a lop-sided contest.
The gap between India’s mixed doubles pair of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N Sikki Reddy and Chinese combination of Wang Yilyu and Huang Dongping was evident once again as they went down 5-21 11-21 against the world no 2 pair to trail 0-1.
Sameer Verma, whose straight-game loss to Lee Zii Jia proved to be vital against Malaysia on Tuesday, once again took the court after Kidambi Srikanth suffered an injury during a practice session.
“Won’t be playing today due to an injury caused during practice. Will be backing the team for today’s all-important match,” Srikanth had tweeted ahead of the clash.
In Srikanth’s absence, Sameer fought for an hour and 11 minutes in the men’s singles tie before losing 17-21 20-22 against Olympic champion Chen Long as India slumped to 0-2 deficit.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, who recently made a comeback after recovering from a shoulder injury, and Chirag Shetty were then given the task of taming the World No. 7 pair of Han Chengkai and Zhou Haodong but the Indian men’s doubles pair lost 21-18 15-21 17-21 to allow China take an unassailable 3-0 lead.
Saina Nehwal then went down 12-21 17-21 to All England Champion Chen Yufei in a 33-minute women’s singles match, while World no 3 women’s doubles pair of Chen Qingchen and Jia Yifan beat Ashwini Ponnappa and Sikki 21-12 21-15 as India sunk without a trace.
India had reached the quarterfinals in the 2011 and 2017 editions of the Sudirman Cup.
Comments
SHARE