India Open Poor – While most of the Indians lost in the second round of the India Open badminton, the biggest upset was the doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, title favorites and world No. 3 pair, who suffered a defeat to the Japanese tenacity of Hiroki Midorikawa and Kyohei Yamashita that they would like to forget. The Indians, who last won a title on the World Tour at the Thailand Open in May 2024, struggled throughout and paid the price for their inconsistency.

A controversial call against him at a crucial moment in the third game didn’t help matters, but that was the least of his problems. Satwiksairaj admitted, “The officials said I touched the net, but I didn’t feel anything. It was a crucial point and things could have gone either way.

” The Indians were trailing 15-16 at that time, however they took four more points after that, which was just an indication of the kind of day they had. The pair were honest enough to admit that it was not the reason for their defeat.

“We didn’t play well, it was a poor performance, and we weren’t up to expectations. Yes, it takes time to adjust in the first game [they had never played their opponents before] but I think we didn’t play the right game,” admitted Chirag. Battling the conditions, it took time for the Indians to get out of the blocks.

While Satwiksairaj agreed that getting a walkover in the first round meant he did not play for three days, he insisted that it was not the reason for the defeat. “It was a bit tricky, we wanted to do well, but we played a bit of a bad game with some good points and really fell behind the others,” he said. “We were pushing a little more and they were good on the counter-attack.

It takes a little time to adjust to a new stadium, but I don’t want to give any excuses; we just didn’t play well. We were a little hesitant and when it got closer, we held back instead of being more active.

We should have finished in the second game when we were ahead 17-14. I think now is the time we need to move on and focus on the next tournament.

” Next month will be the Badminton Asia Championships, a crown he had won in 2023, hoping to end his long title drought.