Sudirman Cup| India knocked out of quarter-final by China 0-3

Team India bowed out of the Sudirman Cup after going down 0-3 against top-seeded China in the quarter-finals of the mixed team championship as doubles pair of Ashwini Ponnappa-Satwiksairaj Rankireddy crashed out of the campaign after a gritty show against World no. 2 pair Lu Kai-Huang Yaqiong.

In the first match, the Indian pair lost 21-16, 13-21, 21-16 in a match that lasted an hour and three minutes. Though the Ponappa-Rankireddy team had the edge after winning the first game, the Chinese duo was quick to find a way to take them down in the next two games.

Despite coming on the back of a good win against Indonesia’s Jonaton Christie 21-15, 21-16, in the second match of the tie between Kidambi Srikanth and Chen Long, Kidambi fell short against the Olympic Champion losing 21-16, 21-17. This defeat saw India slip to a 0-2 deficit in the five-match rubber.

The young pair of Satwiksairaj and Chirag Sen then faced Fu Haifeng and Zhang Nan in the mixed doubles match and succumbed 9-21 11-21 within half an hour as China registered a 3-0 win over India. 

PV Sindhu’s  women’s singles match against He Bingjao and Ashwini Ponappa- N. Sikki Reddy’s women’s doubles against Bao Yixin- Tang Jinhua now stand canceled as they became inconsequential. This has deprived the ninth-seeded Indian an opportunity to play for pride as well. 

India have qualified for the knockout stage only once in 2011 but even then, the Chinese defeated them with a 3-1 win.

China, so far have lost only one of their 10 matches in the round-robin stage and they will now face the winner of the quarter-final match between Japan and Malaysia.