“Malaysians came here with a winning mentality, ‘ says Satwiksairaj Rankireddy after the Indian Mixed Team lost the CWG finals

The Indian Mixed Badminton team tried very hard but had to settle for the silver medal at the Commonwealth Games 2022. The Indian team were the defending champions from 2018 in Gold Coast but they failed to live up to the expectations as Malaysia came up strong and delivered great performances to ruffle a few feathers in the Indian camp.

Things started to go down when the Indian pairing of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty lost the first match of the finals against  Malaysian duo of Teng Fong Aaron Chia and Wooi Yik Soh 18-21, 15-21.

While PV Sindhu was also made to work hard but she came out victorious against  Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in the Women’s Singles. While the Indian ace won the match 22-20, 21-17 she had to fight tooth and nail to register India’s only win in the finals. “She played well and it is not going to be easy. I have to be focused from day one… on my feet and alert all the time,” Sindhu said after the match.

There was a lot expected from former World No.1 Srikanth Kidambi but it was clearly not his day as he crumbled under pressure and made some uncharacteristic errors in his netplay.  Malaysia’s NG Tze Yong who is ranked 42nd in the World came up with some scintillating badminton to disrupt Kidambi’s rhythm which eventually helped him drag the game in his favour. Kidambi kept on making mistakes and gave away easy points to his Malaysian counterpart. The match ended with a weird scoreline of 19-21, 21-6, 16-21 where the Indian dominated the second game but failed to continue that momentum into the penultimate game.

Rankireddy shared how he felt helpless watching Srikanth Kidambi go down as he feels that the Malaysians came here with a motivation to win and it was just their day. He also added how the Thomas Cup felt a lot easier as things were going their way in that final. “Never seen Srikanth anna (brother) break down like this. I couldn’t bear to see him like that. I just walked out of the hall. Even then I could hear the announcer, so I plugged in and put on loud music. I felt the Thomas Cup was easier than this. The Malaysians were in it with a winning mentality. It is just a matter of who is better on the particular day. We will come back from this.”

Lastly the young duo of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand put their best foot forward against the Malaysian pairing of Thinaah Muralitharan and Tan Koong Le Pearly as the Indians lost 21-18, 21-17 in the decider and had to settle for the silver medal.