Two months have handed since that historic night on the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium when Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty turned the primary Indian males’s doubles pair to medal on the World Championships.
A lot water has flowed underneath the bridge ever since. Rankireddy went residence to Amalapuram to spend some much-needed time along with his household. Shetty took a long-awaited break and travelled to Goa to “chill” along with his buddies.
However a lot hasn’t modified in terms of their on-court efficiency. The world No 8 mix have continued their menacing kind – for his or her opponents – with which they began the yr to scalp yet one more huge shot pair on Thursday.
Rankireddy and Shetty took simply 36 minutes to beat reigning All England Open champions Muhammad Shohibul Fikri and Bagas Maulana of Indonesia to enter the quarter-finals of the $750,000 Denmark Open on the Jyske Financial institution Enviornment in Odense.
This was their second victory in as many conferences towards the world No 14 duo, having additionally overwhelmed the Indonesians within the opening spherical of the Swiss Open in Basel in March.
The Indian pair has been in sensational kind in the previous couple of months. They guided India to an unprecedented Thomas Cup crown in Bangkok in Might earlier than turning into the primary Indian males’s doubles pair to win gold on the Commonwealth Video games in Birmingham. They then adopted up by turning into the primary Indian males’s doubles pair to win a medal (bronze) on the World Championships.
Having comprehensively received the primary sport, the seventh-seeded Indians have been seeking to shortly shut the competition. However Fikri and Maulana fought again within the second sport, not permitting Rankireddy and Shetty to run away with the competition. Neither pair gave the opposite greater than a two-point hole till 17-16 when Rankireddy and Shetty clinched the subsequent 4 factors to pocket the sport and contest.
Within the first spherical on Wednesday, the Thomas Cup champions had overwhelmed South Koreans Kang Min Hyuk and Search engine optimisation Seung Jae in straight video games for his or her second victory in three conferences.
On Friday, Rankireddy and Shetty should beat reigning world champions and Malaysian fourth seeds Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik – a pair they’ve by no means overwhelmed in six earlier face-offs, together with all 3 times this yr. The final time the 2 pairs met, the world No 4 Malaysians got here out on high in a thriller within the semi-finals of the World Championships in August.
In different Spherical of 16 matches involving Indians on the Tremendous 750 match, Japanese second seeds Yuta Watanabe and Arisa Higashino defeated Ishaan Bhatnagar and Tanisha Crasto 23-21, 21-13 in 47 minutes in blended doubles whereas Thai girls’s doubles sixth seeds Jongkolphan Kititharakul and Rawinda Prajongjai accounted for the lack of Treesa Jolly and P Gayatri Gopichand, beating the Indian pairing 21-16, 21-10 in 31 minutes.
In males’s singles motion, former world champion Loh Kean Yew of Singapore beat Kidambi Srikanth 21-13, 21-15 in a rematch of the 2021 World Championship last. Regardless of main at first of the competition, Srikanth’s spark simply fizzled out because the seventh-seeded Singaporean pressed the foot on the accelerator to shortly pocket the primary sport. Loh gave the previous world No 1 Indian no alternative within the second sport to shortly shut the competition in simply 35 minutes.
Later, Lakshya Sen beat good friend and compatriot HS Prannoy 21-9, 21-18 in 39 minutes to e-book a berth within the quarter-finals the place he’ll face the winner of the match between China’s Lu Guang Zu and Japan’s Kodai Naraoka. This was Sen’s third win in 5 conferences towards Prannoy.