\n
Vantaa, Sep 27 (PTI) Competing without its star players, the Indian badminton team’s chances to qualify for the knockout stage of the Sudirman Cup ended after suffering a heavy 0-5 defeat against formidable China here on Monday.<\/p>\n
It was India’s second consecutive defeat after losing the Group A opener to Thailand and now the final match against Finland on Wednesday has been rendered inconsequential.<\/p>\n
Up against 11-time champions China, the chances were always slim for the new-look Indian team but the fact that the players couldn’t even win a single game reflects poorly on the bench strength in Indian badminton.<\/p>\n
The absence of double Olympic medallist P V Sindhu, London Games bronze medallist Saina Nehwal and men’s doubles pair of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy also hurt India’s prospect as the team cut a sorry figure at the team-tournament.<\/p>\n
Starting the proceedings, men’s doubles pair of MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapil put up a fight against Liu Cheng and Zhou Hao Dong before going down 20-22 17-21.<\/p>\n
Young Aditi Bhatt then tested her skills against Olympic champion Chen Yu Fei, who expectedly notched up an easy 21-9 21-8 win to put China ahead 2-0.<\/p>\n
World No. 15 B Sai Praneeth then took the court against former All England Champion Shi Yuqi in men’s singles but it turned out be a one-sided affair as he went down 10-21 10-21 as China sealed the contest by taking an unassailable 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n
In the last two inconsequential matches of the tie, Commonweath Games bronze medallist Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki reddy lost 16-21 13-21 to Chinese world number 15 Zheng Yu and Li Wen Mei, while Du Yue and Feng Yan Zhe beat scratch pair of Kidambi Srikanth and Rutaparna Panda 9-21 9-21 in the mixed doubles match.<\/p>\n
In men’s singles, Praneeth suffered his fifth defeat to Shi Yuqi, who was clearly the better player on court as he troubled the Indian with his fierce pace and displayed solid defence.<\/p>\n
Shi Yuqi, currently ranked 10th, played a high pace game and repeatedly brought down the shuttle at lightening speed to bamboozle the Indian, who was left to do the catch up act.<\/p>\n
Shi Yuqi, who was playing after recovering from a injury, looked in great touch as he defended well and played some superb shots.<\/p>\n
Praneeth lagged 4-11 in the first break and then reached 15-4 before sealing the opening game in 16 minutes.<\/p>\n
Praneeth tried to step up his pace but he was too erratic. The Chinese continued to control the net and produced winners to again lead 11-4 at the interval.<\/p>\n
The duo played some fast-paced rallies but Praneeth just couldn’t find a way to penetrate the defence of Shi Yuqi.<\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vantaa, Sep 27 (PTI) Competing without its star players, the Indian badminton team’s chances to qualify for the knockout stage of the Sudirman Cup ended after suffering a heavy 0-5 defeat against formidable China here on Monday. It was India’s second consecutive defeat after losing the Group A opener to Thailand and now the final […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-172856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}