Singapore, May 31 (IANS) India’s top men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty crashed out of the Singapore Open, losing the Malaysian combine of Aaron Chia and Wooi Yik Soh in a semifinal clash on Saturday. The Indian duo went down to the third-seeded Malaysian pair in three hard-fought games, 21-19, 10-21, 18-21, in a Court 1 battle that lasted over an hour.

Satwik-Chirag, who trail 2-10 in head-to-head to the Malaysian pair, won the first game after winning five points in a row to take the lead midway through the game. From 12-8, they maintained their upper hand and went on to win from an 18-18 score. Their rivals took control of the second game from the start, opening up a 4-0 lead and then extending it to 7-1. Though the Indians tried their best for a comeback, Chia and Soh went on to win the game 21-10 and levelled the scores.

In the decider, the Malaysians opened up a lead from 6-6 and surged ahead 9-6. From 16-10, they extended the gap to 16-11, and though the Indians fought back from 20-11 down and saved six match points to make it 20-18, the Malaysians eventually won the match 21-18 to seal victory.

Though they lost the match, Satwik and Chirag saw a lot of positives in their run to the semifinals here. “I think a lot of positives. I think to come this far with the number of days we’ve trained and the months we’ve had both professionally and personally, I think to get back here and reach semis, I think we never really expected,” said Chirag Shetty after the match.

The Indian duo were especially stirred by their quarterfinal win over the world No. 1 Malaysian pair of Goh Sze Fei and Nur Izzuddin.

“So I think plenty of positives because you always see that, like as you go deeper into the event, you want to go and win the title. But I think when I look back at the way whatever we faced over the past couple of months, I think to come back here and reach the semis, I think it’s a really good start,” he said.

Satwik said beating the No.1 pair gives them the confidence to move up from the No. 27 that they are currently ranked.

“We didn’t like that number 27. I think we have heard about that, but it’s because of the break. We had unfortunate niggle and little injuries here and there. After the Olympics, we didn’t play many tournaments, but if you look back, whatever we played, we reached the semifinals. So it is a good thing,” he added.

Satwik also gave a lot of credit to his partner Chirag and said he had been through many things in the last month, which was not right.

The former World No.1 pair will next be participating in the Indonesia Open.

–IANS

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