India shuttlers Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty recorded a stunning victory over Malaysia's Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik in the quarter-final of the BWF World Championships. This victory is nothing short of massive for Satwik and Chirag as they had been defeated by the Malaysian duo in the bronze medal match at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The Indian duo convincingly won the first set by 21-12 and even though it looked like Chia-Soh were back in the fight during the second set, they eventually ended up losing it by 21-19 and got eliminated from the world championships. Satwik-Chirag will now be facing-off against Chinese shuttlers Liu Yi and Chen Boyang in the semi-finals.
The Indian duo had won bronze in 2022
This will be Satwik and Chirag's second medal at the World Championships as they had previously bagged bronze in 2022. It will also extend India's streak of podium finshes at every edition of the event since 2011.
Interestingly, Chia and Soh were the favourites coming into the match as they had defeated Satwik and Chirag in both Singapore and China earlier this year after snatching bronze medal at the Olympics in 2024. However, the Indian duo went on to completely dominate the match and ended up defeating their arch-nemesis in convincing fashion.
Meanwhile, it didn't turn out to be a great day at the office for the other Indian shuttlers as PV Sindhu got eliminated in the quarter-finals after losing against Indonesia's Putri Kusuma Wardani. After losing the first set 21-14, Sindhu managed to come back into the game and took the second set 13-21. However, she would lose the deciding set by 21-16 and would get knocked out from the competition.
Then, the duo of Dhruv Kapila and Tanisha Crasto also got eliminated after recording a defeat to Malaysia's pairing of Chen Tang Jie and Toh Ee Wei in quarter-finals for mixed doubles. The Indian duo never really looked to be in the game and were handed a convincing defeat by 21-15 and 21-13.