Commonwealth games champion Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty thumped China’s Liu Yu Chen and Ou Xuan 17-21, 22-20, 21-9 to advance to the Super 1000 Malaysian Open semi-finals. The Chinese were too good while defending and flat net exchanges that kept Indians at bay who kept making errors which made matter worse for them. The match was even stevens in the first game but the Chinese hurdled 12-18 in the second game to give themselves the best chance of reaching the semi finals.
Satwik and Chirag have showed steel of nerves on many occasions and they did something special to make it 18-18 in the second game as well and surged ahead 19-18 at one stage. The scores were leveled at 20-20 but the Indian pair attacking style of play meant that the game went to the third and decider.
The 7th seed Indians were on song right from the word “go” and didn’t give any chance to the Chinese and they didn’t had any answers to the Indian attack. The Indian pairing didn’t break a sweat to comfortably win it 21-9 and made it to the semi finals where they will be up against another Chinese pairing of Liang Wei Keng and Wang Chang in the round of 4.
Head to head– This will be the first match between the two pair.
Live streaming– The live streaming will be available on Voot mobile application and official website. The TV broadcasting will be done on Sports 18 and Sports 18HD.
Date and match timings- The match will be played on 14th January 2023 from 4:30 PM IST (tentative)
