Bangkok: India's Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty stunned the reigning world champions Li Jun Hui and Liu Yu Chen in the final of Thailand Open to become the first Indian pair to win a BWF Super 500 badminton tournament, here on Sunday.
The Indian pair go the better of third-seeded Chinese combo 21-19, 18-21, 21-18 in 62 minutes to win their biggest career title.
What a day, what a week for these guys! 🇮🇳 @BAI_Media
— BWF (@bwfmedia) August 4, 2019
READ: https://t.co/KYbHavWEV6
📸 @badmintonphoto pic.twitter.com/UW3pbF92sA
Speaking after the match, Rankireddy said: “I was not playing like usual but I kept telling myself that it’s just one more match, one more match. I was so calm and whenever I got a chance, I wanted to finish the shot. I could see that they didn’t want to lift the shuttle for me.”
Meanwhile, Shetty said: “I can’t believe that we’ve just beaten the current world champs. They are really good attacking players so our plan was to keep the shuttle low. We varied our shots. We played a few flat shots but then they rushed to the net so we decided that Satwik would play a few hard smashes and I would play some soft shots down to the net. Their defence is usually very good too but I think at their height, it looked like they were struggling to come forward low at the net.”
Satwik and Chirag have shown that anything is possible when you ‘believe’. This is just so huge for Indian sport. Congrats @BAI_Media @Media_SAI @GoSportsVoices pic.twitter.com/XBBoGxdxhQ
— Viren Rasquinha (@virenrasquinha) August 4, 2019
#Badminton glory for India! 🇮🇳🏸
— SAIMedia (@Media_SAI) August 4, 2019
Our #TOPSAthlete men’s doubles duo of @satwiksairaj- @Shettychirag04 beat world #2 Chinese duo #LiJunHui- #LiYuChen 21-19, 18-21, 21-18 at the #ThailandOpenSuper500 to win the biggest title of their career.💪🏻
Many congratulations!👏🏻🎊 pic.twitter.com/Wd6yCqatML
. @satwiksairaj @Shettychirag04
— BAI Media (@BAI_Media) August 4, 2019
The dreams of more than a billion just came true today! Satwik & Chirag put India on the doubles map with their as well as India's biggest doubles title ever! Here's hoping this is just the start! 👏🏼🎉#ThailandOpen2019 #IndiaOnTheRise #badminton pic.twitter.com/883tJ3IMeq
