After PV Sindhu’s exit from the All England Open Badminton Championships, world number one Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty also bowed out of the mega event on Thursday (March 14). Thus, their wait for an All England Open crown continues as the top seeds got eliminated in the men’s doubles second round, losing to former champions Muhammad Shohibul Fikri and Bagas Maulana of Indonesia in straight games. The Indian pair lost 16-21, 15-21 in just 44 minutes at the United Arena in Birmingham.

Chirag-Satwik were not at their usual best from the word go. They made a lot of errors to hand early momentum to Fikri-Maulana in the first game. While they did well to close the gap, the Indonesian pair still won 21-16. The world number nine pair from Indonesia didn’t concede the momentum and won the second and penultimate game 21-15 to wrap up the contest in less than an hour. This became Chirag-Satwik’s third loss to the Indonesian pair in seven meetings.

With this loss, Chirag-Satwik’s dream run of reaching the final of all the tournaments they featured in 2024 has also come to an end. Now, all hopes ride on Lakshya Sen, who is the lone Indian in the fray at the All England Open. He is under tremendous pressure as people are looking forward to him becoming the first-ever Indian to win the All England crown after Prakash Padukone in 1981 and Pullela Gopichand in 2001. In 2022, Lakshya came close but settled for the second spot with a loss in the men’s singles final.

Meanwhile, Sindhu’s ordinary run prior to the Paris Olympics continued on Thursday. She lost the women’s singles second round after going down to No. 1 ranked An Se Young of South Korea. It was the star shuttler’s seventh successive defeat to the South Korean star.

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