India’s Badminton Mixed Doubles Dreams End at 2018 Asian Games

August 23, 2018 Dwayne Fernandes Sports Scoops 0

Jakarta, 23 August 2018: The Indian Mixed Doubles Badminton pair of Satwik Sairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa crashed out in their Round of 32 mixed doubles game, after losing 25-27, 16-21 to the Thailand pair of Dechapol Puavaranukroh and Sapsiree Taerattanachai on Thursday. The game took place at the Gelora Bung Karno Sports Complex in Jakarta, Indonesia. It was a total of just 32 minutes before the game ended.

Later in the day today, another Indian pair of Pranaav Chopra and Sikki Reddy was knocked out after losing 15-21, 23-21 to their Malaysian opponents, Chan Peng Soon and Goh Liu Ying, also at the Gelora Bung Karno Sports Complex. With this loss, India’s campaign in the badminton mixed doubles competition ended at the 2018 Asian Games.

Players like the 28-year old Ponnappa have brought home a lot of honours in past international tournaments, but it wasn’t to be this time around. While India has been doing brilliantly in shooting and wrestling and even in lesser known sports like Wushu Sanda, they have made early exits in the badminton mixed doubles, where there actually were a lot of high hopes.

However, the results were more favourable in the Women’s Singles tournament, as Saina Nehwal breezed through her opening game in straight sets, while ace shuttler PV Sindhu also progressed. Sindhu had to survive a real scare before progressing, losing her second set to the world #52 ranked Vu Thi Trang. However, she got through in the decider. Sindhu was also recently announced as the world’s 7th highest paid sportswoman as per Forbes, and that’s quite an achievement at this young age.

We will continue to cheer our Indian shuttlers, even though the mixed doubles tournament will be without them. Keep watching Read Scoops for more updates on the same.