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Three gold medals at stake for Indian shuttlers
PV SIndhu, Lakshya Sen, Chirag Shetty-Satwiksairaj Rankireddy have reached the gold medal match of their respective categories at the ongoing Commonwealth Games 2022.
Indian shuttlers will vie for three gold medals in Birmingham on Monday after PV Sindhu, Lakshya Sen and the pair of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy won their respective semi-finals at the National Exhibition Centre.
If all three finals end in victories, it will be the first time India will bring home three gold medals in badminton from the Commonwealth Games. Their previous best was two gold each in Delhi 2010 and Gold Coast 2018.
Former world champion PV Sindhu started the proceedings on Sunday with a 21-19, 21-17 victory over world No 18 Yeo Jia Min to extend her record to 2-0 against the Singaporean.
The final will be a battle between the top two women’s singles seeds as world No 7 Sindhu will take on Canadian world No 13 Michelle Li with Sindhu having an 8-2 win-loss record. Significantly, both of the Indian’s losses came at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow eight years ago when Sindhu was a budding player, having just burst on to the international scene.
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In the men’s singles last four, Lakshya Sen had to battle hard against Singapore’s Jia Heng Teh before progressing to the final with a 21-10, 18-21, 21-16 win over the world No 87. This was world No 10 Sen’s second win over Teh in as many meetings. He will take on Malaysian Ng Tze Yong for gold.
Sen has a 2-0 record, including a victory this year at the India Open in New Delhi, against the world No 42, but Yong has been in brilliant form in Birmingham, halting what could have been an all-India final when he beat former world No 1 Kidambi Srikanth 13-21, 21-19, 21-10 in the other semi-final. Yong had also beaten World Championships silver medallist Srikanth in the final of the mixed team event. Srikanth will play Teh for the bronze.
Shetty and Rankireddy reached the men’s doubles final with a 21-6, 21-15 win over the scratch Malaysian pair of Tan Kian Meng and Chan Peng Soon. They will next play home pair Ben Lane and Sean Vendy. The Englishmen upset Malaysian top seeds Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik in the semis.
The Indian world No 7 combine have a 1-1 record against world No 19 Vendy and Lane, having won their last contest at the Tokyo Olympics last year.
Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly lost their women’s doubles semi-final 13-21, 16-21 to Malaysia's Thinaah Muralitharan and Pearly Tan. This was the Indian pair’s third loss in a row to the world No 11 duo. They will now play the bronze medal contest against world No 159 Hsuan-Yu Wendy Chen and Gronya Somerville of Australia.
