Nanning (China): India crashed out of the Sudirman Cup mixed team badminton championships after losing 0-3 to 10-time champions China in the second and final group match, here today.
After going down 2-3 to Malaysia in their opening Group 1D match, India needed an extraordinary effort to get across the mighty Chinese but the shuttlers yet again produced a below-par performance to go down in a lop-sided contest.
The gap between India’s mixed doubles pair of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N Sikki Reddy and Chinese combination of Wang Yilyu and Huang Dongping was evident once again as they went down 5-21 11-21 against the world no 2 pair to trail 0-1.
Sameer Verma, whose straight-game loss to Lee Zii Jia proved to be vital against Malaysia on Tuesday, once again took the court after Kidambi Srikanth suffered a minor injury during practice sessions here. “Won’t be playing today due to an injury caused during practice. Will be backing the team for today’s all-important match,” Srikanth had tweeted ahead of the clash.
In Srikanth’s absence, Sameer fought for an hour and 11 minutes in the men’s singles tie before losing 17-21 20-22 against Olympic champion Chen Long as India slumped to 0-2 deficit.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, who recently made a comeback after recovering from a shoulder injury, and Chirag Shetty were then given the task of taming the world no 7 pair of Han Chengkai and Zhou Haodong but the Indian men’s doubles pair lost 21-18 15-21 17-21 to draw curtains to their campaign here. India had reached the quarterfinals in the 2011 and 2017 editions of the Sudirman Cup.