The Indian men’s and women’s badminton teams crashed out of the Thomas and Uber Cup finals after suffering identical 0-3 losses at the hands of Indonesia and China respectively in their quarterfinal matches in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Wednesday.
Top Indian male and female shuttlers Parupalli Kashyap and Saina Nehwal gave a scare to their higher-ranked opponents Taufik Hidayat and Yihan Wang before eventually bowing down 12-21, 21-10, 17-21 and 21-14, 11-21, 18-21 respectively.
However, all the other Indians suffered straight-game defeats as their campaign ended on a disappointing note.
In the Thomas Cup quarterfinal, world number 33 Kashyap came back strongly to win the second game 21-10 after losing the first 12-21.
In the decider, Kashyap was ahead 10-8 before Hidayat made it 10-10. From there on, Hidayat stamped his authority and the closest scoreline Kashyap could reach was 13-14 before the world number five Indonesian wrapped up the game 21-17. The Indian doubles duo of Sanave Thomas and Akshay Dewalkar lost 16-21, 17-21 to Markis Kido and Hendra Setiawan before Arvind Bhat was outplayed 8-21, 10-21 by Simon Santoso in the third match. In the Uber Cup, world number six Saina looked set for an upset victory winning the first game 21-14 against Wang.
But, Wang came back strongly to win the second game 21-11. The stage was set for a thrilling deciding set and Saina was leading 8-5. However, the Chinese closed out the game 21-18 to wrap up the match in 56 minutes. — PTI