'Want to do Well in Front our Home Crowd': Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, Chirag Shetty Target Indian Open Title

The ace Indian badminton duo of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty fell just short of another Super 1000 title on Sunday at the Malaysian Open as they went down in the final to world No. 1 Chinese Liang Wei Keng and Wang Chang in an exciting clash.

The Indian pair put up a brilliant fight but ended up second to the Chinese unit as they went down 21-9 18-21 17-21 and will enter next week’s India Open with a lot of confidence following their strong showing in Kuala Lumpur.

The Asian Games gold medallists are one of the top billed pairing at the upcoming Indian event and will look to claim their first title of the season.

The India Open Super 750 crown begins on Tuesday at the IG Stadium in New Delhi.

“We want to do well in our home country next week, so we don’t want to relax with this, we are more hungry and next week also we want to do well in front our home crowd,” Satwik said after the loss in he final.

“We obviously could have played a lot better towards the end. I think what’s important is to look at the positives also, we have played some good badminton here but we are not done yet,” Chirag said.

“India Open is coming up next week and we want to go one better,” he added.

Satwik and Chirag, the Asian Games gold medallists, squandered an opening game advantage and an 11-7 lead in the decider to lose the summit clash.

Chirag and Satwik went down to Liang, and Wang, for the fourth time in their career, while the Indian pair has managed just one win over the Chinese duo at the Korea Open Super 500 last year.

“Till we retire we will be playing against them for a long time. It is always a tough fight against them. We are happy with what we wanted to achieve, we are happy we could go deep into the tournament,” Satwik said about the rivalry.

“I feel it is still not my 100 per cent, there is something inside me, I am not satisfied,” he added.

“In few other tournaments, I felt I was 100 per cent but here we played finals but still I felt like we played 60-70 per cent. So, if we can play our 100 per cent then we would like to see what happens against them,” Satwik said.