There were three Indian top seeds in the finals of the Hyderabad Open and all three were expected to win the title but only two managed to in the end.
The men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, and singles player Sameer Verma – both ranked 21 in the world – easily won their respective finals.
Pranaav Jerry Chopra and Sikki Reddy should have joined them on the top of the podium but squandered substantial leads in the second and third games of their final against a pair from Indonesia to end up with silver.
The men’s doubles final kicked off proceedings on Sunday, as the steadily rising pair of Satwik and Chirag bagged their first title of the year. Apart from their second-round match against K Nandagopal and Gouse Shaik, who took the top seeds to a deciding game, Satwik and Chirag hardly broke a sweat in this entire tournament, which they were treating as warm-up for the higher-level Japan Open and China Open events over the next two weeks.
Indonesia’s Akbar Bintang Cahyono and Moh Reza Pahlevi Isfahani, ranked 47th in the world, managed to keep a one-point lead over Satwik and Chirag till the first interval, but could not sustain the pressure after that. The match ended 21-16, 21-14 in favour of the Indians in just 26 minutes, as Satwik clinched the title with his trademark jump smash.
Cahyono had another chance to land a gold medal as he teamed up with Winny Oktavina Kandow later in the day for the mixed doubles final against top seeds Chopra and Reddy. The Indonesian pair, ranked 50th in the world, was slow to get off the blocks but then managed to silence the 200-strong Hyderabad crowd that had grown steadily since the first match of the day.
Chopra and Reddy won the first game comfortably 21-15 and had a 17-12 lead in the second, but then dozed off to allow the Indonesians to come from behind and take two game-point opportunities for themselves.
The Indians, ranked 24th in the world, saved one of the game points and should have really saved the second as well, as Kandow lifted the shuttle for what should have been a simple smash for Reddy. However, in a moment of indecision, Reddy left the shuttle for her partner, who was expecting her to take it and by the time he moved for it, it was too late. Kandow and Cahyono won the game 21-19 to take the match into a decider that Reddy and Chopra could really have done without.
The Indian pair regained their ruthlessness in the beginning of the third game but then, unfortunately for the partisan crowd, they again switched off towards the end. This time, they squandered a 19-13 lead, as the Indonesians pounced on the opportunity to level the score to 20-20. Both pairs then traded points before Kandow won it for Indonesia 25-23 with a flick serve that caught Reddy completely off guard.
This was a gold medal that was Chopra’s and Reddy’s to lose, and they did. They could have really done with a gold medal considering they are facing a much higher-ranked Indonesian pair, Tontowi Ahmad and Liliyana Natsir (world No 3), in the first round of the Japan Open next week.
In the final match of the day, Verma secured his first title of the season with a facile 21-15, 21-18 win over Malaysia’s Soong Joo Ven, ranked 91st in the world. Verma will face much tougher opposition over the next three weeks, in which he will be playing three back-to-back tournaments – the Japan Open, China Open and Korea Open – but the title in Hyderabad will still be a confidence booster after what has been a mediocre season prior to this week.
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