After suffering defeat in the quarter-final of the ongoing India Open 2025, top shuttler PV Sindhu vowed to come back stronger. Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty stayed on course for their second consecutive India Open final with a straight win over Korea's Yong Jin and Kang Min Hyuk in the men's doubles quarter-finals, while PV Sindhu and Kiran George were eliminated from the BWF World Tour Super 750 event at the KD Jadhav Indoor Hall on Friday.
Speaking to reporters, PV Sindhu said it was a sad moment for her to lose the match after fighting till the third set.
“Overall, I feel it was everyone's game… It's sad that I lost in the third set after fighting so hard… I have to come back stronger… It's disappointing,” Sindhu told reporters.
There were many positives to take home for Sindhu. The 29-year-old, who has been battling injuries since the Paris Olympics, struggled with her movements in the opening match but took the fight to her opponent once she found her range.
Trailing 3-9 in the second game, Sindhu began pushing Tunjung towards the back of the court, negating the sharpness of Indonesia's quick slice drops and keeping the shuttle in play long enough to avoid an error from her opponent.
She overtook Tunjung 9-9 and although both players remained neck-and-neck afterwards, Sindhu managed to take the match into a decisive phase by forcing the fourth seed to take more risks to try and win points.
The former champion continued with the same strategy in the decider and looked set to pull off an upset that left both players tied at 17-17. A brilliant strokeplay from Tunjung and a misjudgment from Sindhu ultimately decided the fate of the match, which lasted an hour and two minutes.
Speaking to reporters, Chirag Shetty said that he and his partner Satwiksairaj were going all out during the match on Friday. Chirag added that they were putting pressure on the opponents.
“We put all our weapons on alert. In the end they (opponents) were able to defend the shots… We never really wanted them to get back into the match… Our strongest point was to put them under pressure… ” , Chirag Shetty told reporters.
Speaking to reporters, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy said that they were always in control of the match.
“We knew that if we keep applying pressure, they won't last… We were always in control of the match… We were very positive from the start of the match…,” Satwiksairaj told reporters.
It was the combination of Satwik and Chirag that gave the capacity crowd at the KD Jadhav Hall plenty of reasons to celebrate as they played an almost clinical match against the Koreans, who had upset the top seeds and world number one. 1 Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen in the opening round.
The Asian Games gold medalists took a 9-1 lead in the opening match and then controlled the match to take the match in 18 minutes. The Koreas put up a stronger fight in the second game, but the Indians were hardly under pressure.
In the semi-finals they will face third seeds Sze Fei Goh and Nur Izzuddin of Indonesia.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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