Tokyo: India's top ranked badminton pair of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy on Friday become the first Indian men's doubles duo to assure a World Championships medal after beating world no 2 Takuro Hoki and Yugo Kobayashi of Japan in the quarterfinals.
The world number 7 Indian combination outwit the local favourites and defending champions Hoki and Kobayashi 24-22, 15-21, 21-14 in an hour and 15 minutes to claim elusive men's doubles medal at the prestigious tournament.
It was India’s second World Championships medal in doubles discipline after Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa claiming the first back in 2011 in the women’s doubles.
Over all it is a 13th medal for India at the mega event.
Chirag and Satwik, which had claimed the Commonwealth Games gold medal earlier this month, will now take on Tokyo Olympics bronze medallists Malaysian combination of Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik in the semifinals.
Earlier, the upcoming Indian pair M R Arjun and Dhruv Kapila, who became the first Indian men’s doubles pair to make the last eight at the worlds, bowed out after losing 8-21, 14-21 to third-seeded Indonesian veterans Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan.
Indian pair played out differently from their past matches. With the Indians looking in great touch with their defeats of eighth seeds Danes Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen and Commonwealth Games silver medallists Terry Hee and Loh Kean Hean, they could nurture hopes of an upset.
Nothing went their way, however, as the Daddies kept them on a tight leash. In five minutes, Ahsan and Setiawan were up 11-1 as the Indians struggled to find rhythm. For their part, both Ahsan and Setiawan were nearly flawless, dominating the serve-return exchanges and quickly closing out each rally.
“I think we were very rusty with the rackets, the legs were kind of there but then we were not getting anything in the rackets at all. I felt the shuttles were a little faster today with the court conditions changing. We were trying to get the shuttle high, but it was either going too long or short and we were not able to defend. When that happened at the start we were nervous about what to do," Arjun told BWF.
"We wanted to get the shuttle high and not play the in-between shots when we were low, and when that didn’t work, we kind of went blank on what to do next," he added.
"They knew pretty well what we were going to do, and whatever we played did not work,” said Kapila. "We were not feeling tired, it was just a mental thing mostly."
In the men’s singles, HS Prannoy's search for his maiden elusive medal continued as the world no. 18 fell to the 23rd ranked Zhao Jun Peng 21-19, 6-21, 18-21 in the men's singles quarterfinal.
Prannoy, who had beaten former two-time world champion Kento Momota of Japan and CWG champion Lakshya Sen in previous rounds, fought hard to take the first game and after losing a slew of points in the second, he decided to conserve his energy for the crucial decider.
In the third game, both players were evenly matched until 11-11 but Prannoy committed a few unforced errors to allow Zhao to win seven of the next nine points.
Prannoy fought back with some sublime smashes and point construction to get the gap down to 19-17 and 20-18 but Zhao held his nerves and hit a cross-court smash and finished it off with an easy winner. (UNI)
