They walked in as India's lone hopes for a home champion and walked out making a statement.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty remained on track to better their runner-up finish last year with a comprehensive 21-10, 21-17 win against Korea's Yong Jin and Kang Min Hyuk to enter the men's doubles semifinals at the India Open on Friday. The seventh-seeds will next face third-seeds Sze Fei Goh and Nur Izzuddin of Indonesia for a spot in their second consecutive final.
Coming in as the last Indians standing after the heartbreaks of PV Sindhu and Kiran George earlier in the day, Satwik and Chirag gave the sizeable and very vocal crowd enough reasons to cheer, starting on the front foot and staying on top all through.
Even when the Koreans started looking like a minor fightback towards the end of the second game, nothing to worry because the Indians wrapped up in 41 minutes, their shortest match here so far.
The Indian pair quickly went to a 9-1 lead, then controlled the proceedings to pocket the game in just 18 minutes. Aggressive and attacking, they gave the Koreans no breathing space with relentless smashes and constant switching on the court and continued in the same vein in the second game.
They were in a hurry to finish off the match at 13-8, with the World No. 9 Indians, but the Koreans began mixing up their serves and tightened their defence to push back to level at 16-16. But the Indians held their nerves to up the ante and shut the door on them.
Earlier, it seemed that PV Sindhu had finally found a chink in Gregoria Mariska Tunjung's otherwise airtight armour before faltering towards the end to bow out 21-9, 19-21, 21-17 in the quarterfinals against the petite Indonesian. The Indian double Olympic medallist had looked lost, then changed gears and moved, smashed and almost powered her way past her opponent before the latter latched on to the smallest of errors.
Simultaneous and contrasting results at KD Jadhav Indoor Hall of Indira Gandhi Stadium did not come amiss for the two biggest crowd favorites. Sindhu faltered, but on the adjacent court, two-time champion Viktor Axelsen dug deep to see off Singaporean Kean Yew Loh in the quarterfinal 21-19, 13-21, 21-8.
Last-minute entrant Kiran George's dream run came to an end with a fighting 13-21, 19-21 loss to Hong Yang Weng of China.
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