Badminton

Srikanth and Chaliha topped the men’s and women’s singles trials respectively at the Jwala Gutta Badminton Academy in Hyderabad to join PV Sindhu and HS Prannoy for the individual competitions as the selectors announced a 19-member squad for the continental event.

As per the Badminton Association of India (BAI) rules, the top-ranked players P.V Sindhu (women's singles), H.S Prannoy (Men's singles), Satwiksairaj Rankireddy/Chirag Shetty (men's doubles) and Treesha Jolly/Gayatri Gopichand have already qualified to be part of the Indian squad for the Asian Games, which will be held in Hangzhou, China from September 22 to October 8, 2023.

According to the Chinese Badminton Association, Shi Yuqi, Li Shifeng, and Lu Guangzu will play in the men's singles, while the women's singles players are He Bingjiao, Wang Zhiyi, and Olympic champion Chen Yufei. Liu Yuchen/Ou Xuanyi and Liang Weikeng/Wang Chang Will participate in the men's doubles, while the women's.

The Indian men's doubles pair created history on Sunday as they clinched the gold medal after beating Malaysia's Ong Yew Sin and Teo Ee Yi in the final of the Badminton Asia Championships 2023. Shetty and Rankireddy defeated the Malaysian pair 16-21, 21-17, 21-19 in a thrilling men's doubles final that lasted an hour and seven minutes.

Shetty and Rankireddy defeated the Malaysians Yew Sin Ong and Ee Yi Teo 16-21, 21-17, 21-19 in the final in the 2023 edition, coming back from losing the first game to win the next two games and winning the historic gold medal. This was India's second gold medal in the Asian Badminton Championships after Dinesh Khanna bagged the men's singles gold in 1965.

The Indian duo sealed a spot in the summit clash after their opponents, the Tokyo Olympic champions Chinese Taipei's Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin, retired midway through the second game of their semifinal clash. The 22-year-old Satwiksairaj Rankireddy from Amalapuram in Andhra Pradesh and the 25-year-old Mumbai-born Chirag Shetty had won the first game 21-18 and were going neck-and-neck with their Chinese Taipei opponents at 13-14 when Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin withdrew, giving them a walkover.

The Indian duo of Rankireddy and Shetty won by 21-11 21-12. They now face Chinese Taipei's Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin in the last four encounters. However, former world champion PV Sindhu crashed out of the Championships after losing to world No. 2 An Se Young in her women's singles quarter-final match.

World No 11 Sindhu suffered her sixth straight defeat against the South Korean shuttler by going down 21-18, 5-21, 9-21. Sindhu, a two-time Olympic medallist, began well and won the first game despite trailing 13-16 at one stage. The Indian had never won a game against An Se Young in their previous five meetings.

Sindhu advanced to the women's singles pre-quarterfinals with a 21-15, 22-20 win over Chinese Taipei's Wen Chi Hsu. The Indian took 46 minutes to wrap up the win over the Chinese Taipei shuttler. In the first game, Sindhu trailed 11-14 but the world No. 11 Indian badminton player registered nine points in a row to turn the tables and took the lead.

Malvika Bansod and Aakarshi Kashyap are the other Indian players in the fray in the women's singles category in the event that will be played at the Sheikh Rashid Bin Hamdan Indoor Hall, Al Nasr Club in Dubai. The finals will be played on April 30. In the men's singles category, the Indian campaign will be led by H.S Prannoy, Kidambi Srikanth and Lakshya Sen.