India’s Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty faltered at the finishing line to end their dream run at the Malaysia Open Super 1000 with a narrow loss in the men’s doubles final against world No. 1 Chinese Liang Wei keng and Wang Chang here on Sunday.
Satwik and Chirag, the Asian Games gold medallists, squandered an opening game advantage and an 11-7 lead in the decider to go down 21-9, 18-21, 17-21 to Liang and Wang in the summit clash which saw both the pairs displaying some exquisite strokeplay.
“We are happy with how we played in the tournament but a little disappointed that we couldn’t control our nerves.
“We played under a lot more pressure than them towards the end and made silly mistakes but they kept pressing us. Hopefully, we will take revenge next time,” Satwik said after the match.
The duo are “more hungry” and would look to go one better at next week’s India Open as they aim to claim their first silverware of the new season.
“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.
It was a fourth defeat for the Indian pair against Liang and Wang, having lost three of their last four meetings — all in 2023. The only time Satwik and Chirag had emerged victorious was during their title-winning run at the Korea Open Super 500 last year.
“Coach (Mathias Boe) said that we should keep the racquet up and move our foot. We knew they would come back, we should have been calmer and they played exceedingly well,” Chirag said.
