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SportsBadminton

Satwik and Chirag beaten by world No. 37 pair as India's Denmark Open slump deepens

The fifth seeds lost in three games to China's He Jiting and Ren Xiangyu in Odense, and Ayush Shetty and Unnati Hooda also went out in the first round.

From the editorial desk · OdensePublished
Jyske Bank Arena, Odense, home of the Denmark Open
Jyske Bank Arena, Odense, home of the Denmark OpenToxophilus / Wikimedia

Key points

  1. Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty lost 21-12, 15-21, 19-21 to China's He Jiting and Ren Xiangyu.
  2. It was their second first-round exit in a row after the Asian Games.
  3. Kidambi Srikanth is the last Indian left in men's singles.

Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, the fifth seeds, are out of the Denmark Open after a first-round defeat to China’s He Jiting and Ren Xiangyu in Odense on Wednesday.

The Indian pair, ranked fifth in the world, raced through the opening game 21-12 against opponents ranked 37th. The Chinese led 11-4 at the interval of the second, took it 21-15, and then edged a tight decider 21-19 after an hour on court. It was Satwik and Chirag’s first defeat in four meetings with the pair.

It is also their second first-round exit in a row against lower-ranked opponents, after their early loss at the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya last month.

Ayush Shetty went out of the men’s singles in three games to Indonesia’s Alwi Farhan. He lost the first 11-21, fought back to take the second 21-13, but fell away 10-21 in the decider. It was his fourth defeat in six matches against Alwi.

In the women’s singles, Unnati Hooda came close against China’s Han Qianxi before losing 21-23, 21-16, 16-21 in an hour and six minutes.

The results add to a grim week for India at the Super 750 event, where PV Sindhu and Lakshya Sen lost in the first round on Tuesday.

Kidambi Srikanth, the 2017 champion, is now India’s only man left in the singles draw and faces France’s seventh seed Alex Lanier next. Tanvi Sharma meets Germany’s Yvonne Li, who knocked out Sindhu. Ashmita Chaliha and Devika Sihag in the women’s singles, and the women’s doubles pairs of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand and Rutaparna and Swetaparna Panda, were still to play their opening matches.