Ichinomiya, Sep 27 (IANS) India’s mixed doubles duo of Tanisha Crasto and Dhruv Kapila, world championships bronze medallist women’s doubles pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand, bow out in the quarterfinals at the Asian Games on Sunday.
Tanisha and Dhruv went down fighting against world No. 1 Feng Yanzhe and Huang Dongping of China, losing 2-1 (21-14, 18-21, 21-18), while Treesa and Gayatri lost (21-18, 21-9) against world No. 5 Pearly Tan and Thinaah Muralitharan of Malaysia in the women’s doubles quarter-finals.
In the mixed doubles, the Chinese pair went into the mid-game break at 11-9 and stormed through upon resumption to win the first game 21-14. After going down in the opening game, Tanisha and Dhruv clinched a close second game 21-18 and forced a decider.
In the decider, Feng-Huang had raced away to a 12-6 in the early exchanges. But the Indians closed in and cut the deficit to just two points. But even that proved just too much to cover as the Chinese took the decider 21-18.
In the women’s doubles, Treesa Gayatri were on level with the Malaysians for major part of the opening game but eventually faced four game points and can only save two of those as Tan-Muralitharan took the first game 21-18.
The second game saw the Indians taking a 3-0 lead but conceding nine points on the bounce. From that point on, it was the Malaysians who were all guns blazing as they held a massive lead and wrapped up the second game 21-9 and moved into the semifinal, securing a medal.
Later, two-time Olympic medallist PV Sindhu, youngster Unnati Hooda will be action the women’ singles quarter-finals.
Sindhu will take on world No. 4 and Tokyo 2020 Olympic champion Chen Yufei of China, while Unnati will face world No. 3 and three-time world champion Akane Yamaguchi of Japan.
Earlier, Lakshya Sen suffered an early exit from the men’s singles badminton event on Saturday after lsoing to former world champion Loh Kean Yew of Singapore in the second round at the Ichinomiya City Municipal Gymnasium.
Lakshya defeat came a day after Hangzhou 2023 men’s doubles champions Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty saw their title defence end in the opening round.
–IANS
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