Second seeds Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty survived a massive scare against world No 89 Kakeru Kumagai and Hiroki Nishi, saving a match point after dropping the opening game to win 10-21, 22-20, 21-16 in 61 minutes on Thursday to seal their place in the quarterfinals of the Macau Open Super 300.
In men’s singles, Lakshya Sen also joined Tharun Mannepalli in the quarterfinal. The second seed was also pushed to three games as he fought past Chico Aura Dwi Wardoyo of Indonesia 21-14, 14-21, 21-17 to enter the last-eight stage.
Satwik-Chirag took to the court at nearly 10pm local time, and in the early stages looked out of sync and struggled for timing, looked all at sea against Japanese duo. In a tight second game, the Indians overcame a jittery end-phase after losing a controversial point, saving one match point to then force a decider. In the decider, they took an early lead and kept their opponents at an arm’s length.
“At the Singapore Open, we were in the worst shape possible,” Chirag was quoted as saying by BWF before Macau Open. “Winning even one game would have been great, and we ended up playing the semifinals, which was way beyond our expectations. We never even thought we could go beyond the first round… so things are happening, and hopefully we can go further.”
“We have to get fit 100 per cent,” Satwik had added. “We haven’t played without injury for the last one year, we’ve been playing with niggles. We need to be healthy all the time, and not think too far ahead. Once we’re healthy, we can do well. Injuries have been restricting our game.”
The headline of the day for the Indian contingent was Tharun’s breakthrough result against Lee Cheuk Yiu of Hong Kong as he rallied splendidly to outwit the top seed and world No 15, 19-21, 21-14, 22-20 in a match that went past the hour-mark. The 23-year-old world No 47 has now reached his second quarterfinals of a Super 300 tournament after entering the last eight at the German Open in February. Both the Indians face Chinese opponents, with Lakshya facing Zhu Xuan Chen and Tharun taking on Hu Zhe’an, the reigning Junior World Champion.
However, Ayush Shetty was ousted after an 18-21, 16-21 loss to Malaysia’s Justin Hoh.
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In the women’s singles India’s Rakshitha Ramraj went down against Busanan Ongbamrungphan of Thailand 21-14, 10-21, 11-21 in a match that lasted 51 minutes. The teenager was impressive in the opening game as she took on the second seed shot-for-shot, and even had her opponent surprised by the quality of some of her winners. Rakshitha led 7-3 in Game 2 but from there it was one-way traffic as Busanan brought out all the tricks from her bag of deceptive strokes, troubling the Indian with her holds-and-flicks, slices and half smashes.
In the mixed doubles, fifth-seeded Indian duo of Dhruv Kapila and Tanisha Crasto lost to Malaysia’s Jimmy Wong and Lai Pei Jing 21-19, 13-21, 18-21. In the men’s doubles, Pruthvi Roy and K. Sai Pratheek lost to fourth-seeded Junaidi Arif and Roy King Yap of Malaysia 18-21, 18-21.
In the women’s doubles, Priya Konjengbam and Shruti Mishra lost 14-21, 12-21 against Meilysa Puspitasari and Rachel Rose of Indonesia.
