India had a miserable start to their Sudirman Cup campaign as PV Sindhu’s valiant struggle ended in agony.
In a disappointing start to their Sudirman Cup campaign, India lost to the mighty Chinese Taipei 1-4 in their group C opening round match on Sunday. Double Olympic medalist PV Sindhu’s valiant struggle ended in anguish.
Tanisha Crasto and K Sai Prateek of India showed no shortage of spirit, though, as they got off to a good start in the mixed doubles match before succumbing to Yang Po-Hsuan and Hu Ling Fang of Taiwan, ranked 30th in the world, 21-18, 24-26, and 6-21.
India trailed 0-2 after the first two matches when World No. 9 HS Prannoy lost against World No. 5 Chou Tien Chen 19-21, 15-21 after failing to bring his “A” game.
The burden of getting India back into the match was then given to Sindhu, but it was never going to be easy with her rival and former world number one Tai Tzu Ying standing across the net.
After the initial game’s reverse, the 27-year-old from Hyderabad, who hasn’t been playing well lately, put on a valiant display, but Tai Tzu managed to win 21-14 18-21 21-17 in an hour and four minutes.
In the five-match series, it allowed Chinese Taipei to build an unstoppable 3-0 lead.
In less than an hour, Lee Yang and Ye Hong Wei defeated Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty in the men’s doubles match, despite their valiant efforts. This brought India’s record to 0-4 overall.
World No. 17 In the final women’s doubles match, Treesa Jolly and P Gayatri Gopichand, who had lost the opening game, displayed incredible tenacity to defeat Lee Chia Hsin and Teng Chun Hsun with a score of 21-15, 18-21, 13-21. This victory prevented India from going undefeated.
While en route to winning the 2019 world championships, Sindhu last defeated Tai Tzu. It was her 18th setback against the Taipei player overall.
Though she lost the first game, Sindhu, whose best performance thus far this season has been a final appearance at the Spain Masters, appeared much more polished overall.
Tai Tzu appeared to be by far the superior player in the first game, but Sindhu was able to pick up the pace and win the second game to force a deciding.
The pair tied each other up at 6-6 in the third game. Tai Tzu eventually managed to gain a 9-6 advantage, but Sindhu never stopped trying to find ways to trouble the Taipei wizard.
After a forehand angled drive put Sindhu back on par at 10-10, her opponent took a one-point advantage into the half.
When play resumed, Tai Tzu had a 15-14 advantage over Sindhu despite being up 14-12 at the time. Tai Tzu increased its lead to 17-14 after another long shot.
A down the line smash handed the touch artist five match points after she had already played a number of her spectacular shots. Before Tai Tzu quickly returned off the Indian’s serve to win the match, Sindhu made two saves.
