India advances to quarters at the Badminton Asia Team Championship

The Indian men and women's teams on Thursday qualified for the quarterfinals despite losing to their respective opponents in the Badminton Asia Team Championships.

Despite a 1-4 loss against Japan on Thursday, it is PV Sindhu who saved country’s pride.

In the straight game against World No. 2 Akane Yamaguchi, Sindhu registered the victory; with one win and one loss in Group W, India women team stood behind Japan and ahead of

Hong Kong and qualified for quarters.

It took 36-minutes for the Rio Olympic silver medallist PV Sindhu to beat Yamaguchi with 21-19, 21-15 and by this, Sindhu registers 5-3 face-to-face lead against the Japanese.

While, Sri Krishna Priya Kudaravalli of second singles match couldn’t match the opponent World No. 13 Sayaka Sato and lost with a 12-21, 10-21 scoreline.

Ashwini Ponnappa, turned singles player in the third singles match, who couldn’t keep up the challenge against World No. 16 Aya Ohori with 14-21, 12-21 to trail the tie with 1-2.

It was then left to the doubles specialists to bring India back into the tie but both the Indian pairs went down after a good fight. The onus was on Sanyogita Ghorpade and Prajakta Sawant to draw parity for India but they lost 17-21, 17-21 against Shiho Tanaka and Koharu Yonemoto in the first doubles match to hand Japan an unassailable 3-1 lead.

The script turned out to be the same for India in the last inconsequential match of the tie as Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy lost 18-21, 18-21 to Misaki Matsutomo and Ayaka Takahashi.

Later, in the last tie of the men’s match, Indian squad lost to Indonesia with 2-3 in the close contest, yet qualified for the quarterfinals from Group D, in which Indians defeated Philippines and Maldives in their earlier matches.

Kidambi Srikanth took the first game against Jonatan Christie with a disappointing 17-21, 17-21 loss, followed by Satwik and Chirag’s parring the tie in the men’s doubles hard-fought event against Mohammad Ahsan and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo with 18-21, 21-18, 24-22.

In another singles match, B Sai Praneeth added another point to the team’s kitty with a cruising victory against Anthony Sinisuka Ginting  with 21-18, 21-19.

However, the Indians were beaten in the next two matches and lost the tie.

The doubles pair of Arjun M R and Ramchandran Shlok squandered a game lead to lose the match 21-14, 16-21, 12-21 before B Sumeeth Reddy surrendered tamely to Ihsan Maulana Mustofa 12-21, 7-21 in the third singles.

India will face Indonesia and China in the women’s and men’s team respectively in the quarterfinals match on Friday.