Srikanth, Satwik-Chirag bowed out of the All England Open

Third seeded Srikanth Kidambi crashed out of the All England Open after fighting hard against world no. 42 Huang Yuxiang with 11-21, 21-15, 20-22 in the 52-minute encounter.

While, the debutants men’s doubles duo Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty went down fighting against the second seeded and senior shuttlers Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen of Denmark with 16-21, 21-16, 23-21 in the pre-quarters match on Thursday.

Srikanth played the first game very slothy, who trailed throughout the game. With unforced errors for every now and then, failing to save the first game with 11-21.

World no. 2 changed the game after switching the sides. He led the game throughout by consistently increasing the gap. Srikanth scored straight six points to make teh score 14-5 and eventually pushed the match to the decider.

The court became hard battle ground during the deciding game which was neck-to-neck. From 5-5 to 11-11, the players exchanged the leads before Huang caught the moment till a 16-13 lead, followed by Srikanth’s par at 16-16.

The game is almost convinced to be Huang’s but Srikanth cruised with 5 points to lead with 18-16. The nail-biting play went to the match point with 20-20 and was taken by Huang eventually, to his relief. Huang will face Prannoy in the quarter finals match.

Same play scripted in the men’s doubles match, where Satwik and Chirag went down fighting against the senior opponents. Both the teams parred each other in the first two games.  

Being the underdogs, Satwik and Chirag hardly gave gap to breadth to the second seeded opponents since the beginning. Initially led by Boes and Mogensen with 3-1, Satwik and Chirag levelled the score at 3-3. Followed by series of a point exchange, the score went to 11-11 and then to 21-21. At this moment, it could be anyone’s game, and it was not the Indian’s.

Though lost, the duo marked themselves as the youngest players to be qualified for oldest tournament the All England and reaching pre-quarters.