The Indian men’s team on Friday lost to Japan 2-3 to bow out in the quarter-final stage of the Badminton Asia Team Championships in Malaysia and miss out on a medal.
Earlier in the day, the Indian women’s team beat Hong Kong 3-0 to reach the semi-finals and assure themselves of a first medal in the competition.
Japan took the lead in the match after Kenta Nishimoto beat HS Prannoy 21-16, 26-24 in their men’s singles tie. The two players were evenly matched at the start of the match before Nishimoto went on a five-point run to take a 13-8 lead. The Japanese world No 12 comfortably secured the game.
Nishimoto started strongly in the second game racing to a 14-6 and then 19-9 lead. However, Prannoy fought back superbly winning 11 of the next 12 points to level the game at 20-20.
The India had two game point opportunities but couldn’t make them count as Nishimoto closed out the tie.
India levelled the match as Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty beat Kenya Mitshuhashi and Hiroki Okamura 21-15, 21-17. India then took the lead as Lakshya Sen got the better of Koki Watanabe in a closely contested singles tie. Sen won 21-19, 22-20 in 55 minutes.
Japan forced the decider with the pair of Akira Koga and Kazuki Shibata beating MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila 21-17, 21-5.
It all came down to Srikanth’s tie against Momota. The former world No 1s have been struggling for form recently with both dropping out of the top 20 in the world rankings.
Momota held a 15-3 head to head advantage over Srikanth with the Indian’s last win coming back in 2015. But it was Srikanth who landed the first blow recovering from an 8-5 deficit to comfortably win the first game 21-17.
However, Momota came roaring back into the tie winning the second game 21-9 to set up a mouth-watering winner-takes-all third game.
Srikanth got off to the perfect start and raced to an 19-12 lead. However, Momota fought back winning eight points in a row to bring up match points. Srikanth levelled the scored at 20-20 but Momota got the job done in the end.
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