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India Knocked Out of Thomas Cup with 0-5 loss vs China

By: Ambika Asthana
Date: 23 May, 2018
Image Courtesy: Badminton Photo

A major disappointment enveloped the national capital of Thailand when the young but depleted Indian male shuttlers lost their way to qualify for the much-coveted Thomas Cup Quarter Final against China.

Former junior world no. 1 Lakshaya Sen alongwith the Indian doubles pair Arjun MR - Shlok Ramchandran and Arun George - Sanyam Shukla strived to put a great fight against the much-higher ranked opponents. However, it was a bad bad opening by the world no. 9 HS Prannoy as he got defeated by the Olympic champion Chen Long.


Prannoy despite his foot injury threw a spectacular game, however, he was constantly struggling with fitness on the court which unfortunately led the game to finish in just about 27 minutes. The Chinese counterpart clearly won the race in no time as Prannoy was busy dealing with his foot injury that happened to resurface again.



Next up were the 38th ranked Arjun and Sholk Ramachandran who gave quite a fistful fight to their Chinese Counterpart and Olympic gold medallist Liu Cheng and Zhang Nan. Although the Indians did not leave any stone unturned on the court to defeat the power packed pair, however, the final scoreline 21-12, 21-15 proved to suffice that the Indians certainly did not surrender even during the hard times.


Sai Praneeth followed up next and rose hopes for the team as he stood so firm competing against the World no. 3 and the All-England Champion Shi Yuqi. The latter did not give even a moment of advantage to Sai as he lost with 21-9.


Sai was up to put a better show for the next half as he stormed out on the court and Shi seemed to switch off after his facile win in the first set. Sai wrapped the game and scored a heavenly 21-15 by putting the ball in his court. Shi switched back into the game only to balance the victory of both sides with 21-9, 21-15, 21-12 victory.


Shi’s victory put India to beset its loss, however, that did not scare away the young blood of Sanyam and Arun as the doubles match has started. They were playing against the World No. 4 pair Li Junhui and Liu Yuchen, the former threw kitchen sink at the Chinese.


However, following a formidable rally, the Indian pair kept up with Liu and Li until the latter won with 4 extra points with a score of 17- 15 lead. The second game was an even tighter affair before Liu and Li gave a smashing hit of 20-19. Unfortunately, Sanyam and Ankur ran out of juice as the Chinese pair catapulted and achieved a breath-taking 21-15, giving Indians a major tough fight.


Followed by Lakshay Sen, the young Former World No. 1 vs Lin Dan, the two-time Olympic Champion, it was a clash of titans. As the brightest badminton player Sen rose our hopes to a spectacular game, thanks to his agility, supreme accuracy and young legs, he knocked off the China champion with 21-16.


However, lately Lin used his tactic of making Sen run diagonally back and forth across the court which he was doing even in the first set, but Sen’s young legs could bear the torture, with time, they lost some juice and it ended up on a disappointing 9-21 and 8-21.


China proudly moved forward topping all the groups by smashing its opponents- France, Australia and India with a good 0-5 score.  



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