Star players Kidambi Srikanth and PV Sindhu suffered contrasting defeats as India crashed out of the Sudirman Cup mixed team championship with a lopsided 0-5 defeat against Malaysia in their second Group C match, here on Monday. Done. A day after going down 1-4 against Chinese Taipei, India once again put up a poor show and were knocked out of the group stage of the tournament for the second time in a row. Star players Kidambi Srikanth and PV Sindhu failed to perform as expected, ending India’s challenge at the prestigious tournament.
In the last tournament in Vantaa, Finland too, India failed to make it to the knockouts. In the men’s singles, Srikanth made a lot of unforced errors while Sindhu went down against world No. 30 Goh Jin Wei despite winning the first game. In the first match, mixed doubles pair of Dhruv Kapila and Ashwini Ponnappa had a tough fight against Goh Tsun Huat and Lei Shewon Jamie but the Indian pair lost 16-21, 17-21 in 35 minutes.
Srikanth then paid the price for committing too many unforced errors in the men’s singles as he went down 16-21, 11-21 to world number eight Li Ji Jia in a one-sided match, leaving India 0-2 down. World No. 12 Sindhu then fought back from 2-11 down in the first game against Goh but lost the match 21-14, 10-21, 20-22. Due to which India trailed 0-3 in the five match match. Sindhu said, “It is a bit disappointing. In the third game, I was trailing by eight points but managed to come back. It is very disappointing to lose those two points after getting so close.
“Couldn’t find the rhythm in the second game. I made mistakes, every shot I was playing was hitting the net or going out. In the third game, I should have taken the lead from the start but I let him take a big lead. I made some simple mistakes that made a big difference. In the last two matches, Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy lost 18-21 19-21 to Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik in men’s doubles while women’s doubles pair of Gayatri Gopichand and Trisha Jolly went down 15-15. Had to face defeat by -21 13-21, which made India clean. With this defeat, India finished third in Group C while Chinese Taipei and Malaysia qualified for the quarter-finals as the top two teams. India will take on Australia in their last Group C match on Wednesday.
