India’s men’s team missed an opportunity to defeat a weakened China despite K Srikanth’s comeback win against Shi Yuqi in the quarterfinals of the Badminton Asia Team Championships in Alor Setar, Malaysia on Friday. China emerged 3-1 winners and made the final singles tie moot in the five-match rubber.
World No 4 Srikanth, who has had a indifferent start to 2018, was staring at another defeat when he lost the first game of the opening singles tie to Yuqi, as the Chinese world No 7 looked set to improve his 1-3 losing record against the Indian. But, like he did many a time last year, Srikanth bounced back in the second and third games to win 21-14, 16-21, 7-21 in 52 minutes. The third game saw Srikanth dominate proceedings and his win ensured India were off to a good start in the last four.
But the rest of the team could not capitalise on that result, with Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, B Sai Praneeth, B Sumeeth Reddy and Manu Attri losing their respective doubles and singles fixtures.
Satwik and Chirag (world No 25), who have had an impressive start to 2018, went down in straight games to the lower-ranked pair of He Jiting and Tan Qiang (world No 41) 21-17 21-18 in just 36 minutes.
It was then up to world No 17 Sai Praneeth to bring India back ahead, but he went down fighting to Qiao Bin in a match that last an hour and eight minutes. Sai Praneeth started on the front foot but the world No 26 fought back in style to win 9-21, 21-11, 21-17.
Sumeeth and Manu then faced a must-win situation to give Sameer Verma a chance in the final singles fixture, but the national doubles champions from 2017 lost to Han Chengkai and Zhou Haodong 14-21 21-19 21-14 in a match that lasted 53 minutes. This was once again a case of a higher-ranked pair losing to the lower-ranked duo from China. (Indians ranked 30th, compared to the Chinese duo’s rank of 51).
Indian men were already assured of their qualification in the Thomas Cup, before the quarterfinal fixture got underway.
Friday also saw the women’s challenge end at the BATC with PV Sindhu and Co losing to Indonesia. Sindhu, like Srikanth, was the only player who managed to record a win in the tie. The Indian women can still qualify for the Uber Cup in May on the basis of the team’s world ranking barring any major changes in the world ranking by the time all the continental events are completed.
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