Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty have a special love affair with Paris. It was their runner-up finish at the 2019 French Open Super 750 which first put them on the badminton map.
Three years later in 2022, they won their first career Super 750 title at the French Open. In 2023, they competed as world No 1s for the first time at the French Open, finishing as the runner-ups. Earlier this year, they reclaimed the title in Paris – their first title of the season.
But every rise has its fall. On Thursday, Rankireddy and Shetty’s drop ended in heartbreak.
Up against the Malaysian men’s doubles team of Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik – a pair they have traditionally struggled against – Rankireddy and Shetty went down 21-13, 14-21, 16-21 to crash out of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The Indians, seeded third, were outplayed in their own game. Rankireddy and Shetty had employed the flat, fast paced style of play to perfection against Indonesia’s Fajar Alfian and Muhammad Adrianto in their final Group C match but in the quarter-finals, Chia and Soh just did it better.
Having raced away with the opening game in just 17 minutes after a scratchy start, Rankireddy and Shetty played right into the hands of the Malaysians for the rest of the match.
Chia and Soh are one of the finest exponents of the fast, flat exchanges in the circuit, with the former almost unbeatable at the net. Instead of trying to prolong the rallies, Rankireddy and Shetty got sucked into the game the former world champions wanted to play.
The longest rally of the match was just 22 strokes long, while an average rally just lasted four strokes.
Chia, who erred at the net in the opening game, found his groove in the second and it changed the complexion of the contest.
Shetty struggled at the net rather uncharacteristically, often rushing forward for the kill but failing to deliver the point-finishing shot. Rankireddy was never really in the game since the Malaysians rarely lifted the shuttle high enough for him to employ his trademark smashes.
Soh, too, held his own from the back, playing a perfect second fiddle as the 2020 Tokyo Olympics bronze medallist wrapped up the match in a pacy 64 minutes.
The Indians needed some calm in the middle of a fiery storm, but it never arrived in quarter-final contest. There were multiple service errors – height, hitting the shuttle out – as the world No 5 pair crumbled.
Their service returns were shoddy as well, taken aback by the variations put on show by Chia and Soh.
The Malaysians have, for long, been the kryptonite for Rankireddy and Shetty. They had defeated the Indians in the quarter-finals of the 2021 French Open and in the semi-finals of the 2022 World Badminton Championships.
Rankireddy and Shetty, having lost eight matches in a row against Chia-Soh, finally seemed to have cracked the code over them last year, pocketing three consecutive wins.
But at the La Chapelle Arena in Paris, the Malaysians once again landed the knockout blow. The City of Love handed Rankireddy and Shetty their biggest heartbreak on court yet.
Later in the day, Lakshya Sen breezed past compatriot HS Prannoy 21-12, 21-6 in the men’s singles round of 16.
Sen, who had beaten Indonesia’s Jonatan Christie, to qualify for the knockouts, was in sublime touch on Thursday. Unlike his previous contest, the 22-year-old kept things simple and waited for his opponent to make errors.
Having been constantly drawn in long rallies, Prannoy kept on committing mistakes. He looked tired right from the start and was unable to keep up with Sen’s pace.
Prannoy, who had played Vietnam’s Le Duc Phat late on Wednesday, did not seem to have had a proper recovery time as he surrendered in just 39 minutes.
Sen is now slated to face the 34-year-old Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei in the quarter-finals.
Meanwhile, two-time Olympic medallist PV Sindhu also faced a decisive blow as she bowed out of the Paris Games following a 19-21, 14-21 loss to China’s He Bing Jiao.
Playing the Chinese shuttler exactly three years after she had defeated her to win bronze at the Tokyo Olympics, Sindhu was completely outplayed in 56 minutes.
The loss brought an end to Sindhu’s hopes of winning a third consecutive Olympic medal and leaves Sen, in men’s singles, as Indian badminton’s lone hope in Paris.