Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty created history as they became the first Indian men’s doubles pair to advance to the final of the Badminton Asia Championships. The duo made it to the summit clash after their opponents retired midway through the semifinal game on Saturday. This will be India’s first men’s doubles medal at the continental event after 52 years.
After winning the first game, Satwik and Chirag were trailing 13-14 in the second match when the Chinese Taipei duo of Lee Yang and Wang Chi-Lin retired and handed the match to the Indian duo.
They will now face the eighth-seeded Malaysian pair of Ong Yew Sin and Teo Ee Yi in the final on Sunday. They defeated fourth seeds Takuro Hoki and Yugo Kobayashi of Japan 21-6 26-24 in the other semifinal.
Rankireddy and Shetty had earlier made it to the historic semifinals after beating Indonesia’s pair of Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan 21-11 21-12 in the quarterfinals on Friday.
PV Sindhu and HS Prannoy had lost in the quarterfinals in the women’s and men’s singles respectively. India star shuttler PV Sindhu bowed out of the quarterfinals of the women’s singles as she suffered loss to second-seed An Se Young of Korea. On the other hand, HS Prannoy, India’s ace shuttler also lost in the quarterfinals. Kanta Tsuneyama of Japan defeated him. Their compatriot Kidambi Srikanth bowed out of the tournament in the round of 16. Srikanth lost to the fourth-seeded Japanese Kodai Naraoka.
(Inputs from PTI)
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