In what was a difficult day for the Indian contingent at the Spain Masters Super 300 badminton event in Madrid, the mixed doubles team of Sikki Reddy and B Sumeeth Reddy were the only players from the country to win their respective quarter-final match on Saturday.
PV Sindhu, men’s doubles team of MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila and the women’s doubles team of Tanisha Crasto and Ashwini Ponnappa lost their respective matches to exit the tournament.
The husband-wife pair of Sumeeth and Sikki had to work hard in their match against the Indonesian team of Rehan Kusharjanto and Lisa Kusumawati, eventually winning 14-21, 21-11, 21-17 in 41 minutes.
The Indonesians took an early lead in the opening game and continued to build on that, giving the Indians no opportunity to get back into the game – at one time, they led 16-6.
It was the Indians however who dominated the second game, racing to a solid lead from 2-2 to get to 14-4 before eventually closing out the game at 21-11 and taking the match into the decider.
Sikki and Sumeeth trailed for the first half of the third game, and even faced a 5-10 deficit. But they came back strongly. Trailing 9-12, they won eight of the next nine points to go up 17-13 and put themselves in a great position to clinch the match.
They did stutter briefly towards the end, eventually needing a third match point attempt to clinch the spot in the semi-final. They next take on another Indonesian pair, Rinov Rivaldy and Pitha Mentari.
There was heartbreak for Sindhu, as she saved five consecutive match points in a tight loss to Thai sixth seed Supanida Katethong.
Sindhu trailed 15-20 in the deciding game but clawed her way back into the match, winning the next five points to make it 20-20. But Katethong did just enough to claim the next two points to hand Sindhu a tough 26-24, 17-21, 20-22 loss in a match that lasted an hour and 17 minutes.
Men’s doubles pair of Arjun and Kapila lost a tight match as well to Malaysia’s Junaidi Arif and Roy King Yap 19-21, 23-21, 17-21 in a 62-minute encounter.
In women’s doubles, Crasto and Ponnappa, the third seeds, went down to sixth seeded Chinese Taipei duo Lee Chia Hsin and Teng Chun Hsun 13-21, 19-21.
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