Gold Coast: Kidambi Srikanth and Saina Nehwal's splendid performance on Monday guided India to clinch their maiden gold medal in mixed team badminton event after defeating Malaysia 3-1 at the ongoing 21st Commonwealth games here.This is India's 10th gold medal in commonwealth games. India defeated last two-time champions Malaysia in the title of mixed team event.
World number one Saina defeated Malaysia's Sonia Chea 21-11, 19-21, 21-9 and put gold in India's suit.In the last Glasgow Commonwealth Games, India won gold medal in men's singles, bronze medal in men's singles, bronze medal of men's singles while in women's doubles India won silver medal. But this time, with their tremendous performance, India won a gold medal in the team event. The individual competitions in these games will begin on Tuesday.
The first match of the final was mixed doubles in which pair of Satwik Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa defeated Peng Sun Chan and Liu Ying Goh 21-14, 15-21, 21-15 in one hour and five minutes. India made a 1-0 lead.After that, Kidambi Srikanth, the world's second-seeded player, with his great performance, broke the challenge of former number one Lee Chong Wei 21-17 21-14 in 43 minutes to give India a 2-0 lead.The pair of Satwik Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty stepped out on to the court with all guns blazing. From trailing 9-11 at the break, the Indian pair fought back valiantly but lost the game 21-15.
It was up to Saina Nehwal to win the Gold for India. She got off to a good start taking the first game 21-11 after trailing 9-11 at the break against Soniia Chea.In the second game, Saina came out with much more flair. She went into the break at 11-9, comfortably pulling the string on her opponent.Saina won the first game easily with a 21-11 win. In the second game, the fight was stalemate and in the middle of the game, Chiea took a medical timeout due to a hand injury. The Malaysian player made a great comeback after the timeout and won the second game 21-19.
In the deciding game, the score was 7-7 but after that Saina started the process of making an edge that ended with India's win at 21-9. Saina won this match in an hour and four minutes. After winning Saina's matches, the entire Indian camp celebrated this historic victory by embracing each other. Two-time champions Malaysia had to satisfy themselves with silver, while England won the bronze by defeating Singapore 3-0.(UNI)