Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, India Open winners in 2022, pulled out of the ongoing edition in New Delhi ahead of their second round match on Thursday.

The update from venue for the Super 750 event was that Satwik had a groin injury which meant they had to give a walkover to Liu Yu Chen and Ou Xuan Yi of China, the pair that the Indians had defeated dramatically in the Malaysia Open Super 1000 quarterfinal last week. It would have likely been another brutal physical battle against one of the fastest rising pairs going around.

The extent of the injury and how much time it would take to recover is not yet known but Scroll.in understands that it is not perceived to be serious at the moment and that the decision to pull out was taken so as not to aggravate it further.

Satwik-Chirag had started the campaign with a comfortable straight-games win in the opening round at India Open and were looking to go deeper in the tournament in front of their home fans. They had started the season with a good semifinal run in Malaysia.