Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, India’s top men’s doubles pair, beat He Ji Ting and Ren Xiang Yu of China in Kuala Lumpur on Friday and moved on to the semifinals of the Malaysia Open 2024.
The world-ranked No. 2 Indian pair beat the world-ranked No. 32 Chinese pair easily, 21-11, 21-8, in the semifinals. The match lasted only 35 minutes. From the start, Rankireddy and Chirag were the best teams. The Indian pair quickly took a 7-0 lead and never let He Ji Ting and Ren Xiang Yu get back into the game. The Chinese players kept up with Rankireddy and Shetty at first in the second game, but the Indian pair quickly found their flow and won easily to move on to the semifinals.
The men’s doubles team is the only Indian team still in the running for the BWF Super 1000 Malaysian Open 2024. To the other end of the event, Ashwini Ponnappa and Tanisha Crasto, who played doubles for India, quit after losing to Rin Iwanaga and Kie Nakanishi of Japan. 21-15, 21-13.
Even though Ponnappa and Crasto were very good in both games, the Japanese team of Iwanaga and Nakanishi raised the stakes after the breaks in the middle of the games to move on to the next round. Ponnapa and Cristo beat Wakana Nagahara and Mayu Matsumoto, the world No. 9 pair from Japan, in the round of 16 to make it to the last eight.
