Indian men draw blank at Thomas and Uber Cup 2020

The hosts prevailed in a one-sided battle.

The Indian men’s badminton team crashed out of the ongoing Thomas and Uber Cup 2020 on Friday. They tried their best to compete against the mighty Denmark, but eventually lost 1-3 in the quarter-finals. The tournament is going on in Denmark and the hosts are one of the favourites to win it.

The men’s team had lost their previous match against China, which was their final group tie of the competition. The first match of the tie against Denmark was between Viktor Axelsen and Kidambi Srikanth. The World No. 2 was too strong for the Indian shuttler and won the match in straight games. The 38-minute long encounter saw Axelsen emerge victorious by a 21-12, 21-13 scoreline, giving his team a 1-0 lead.

The next match in the tie was the doubles encounter between Kim Astrup and Anders Rasmussen versus Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy. The Indian duo maintained their exceptional performance from the previous tie against China, where they were the sole winners in a 1-4 defeat. They beat the Danes by 21-15, 17-21, 21-18 in a match which lasted 1 hour and 12 minutes. This result levelled the tie 1-1 and gave India slender hope.

All hopes came to an end soon

The next match was a singles clash between Anders Antonsen and Sai Praneeth. The Dane is the World No. 3 and was the favourite to win this match. There were no surprises as Antonsen defeated Sai Praneeth in straight games 21-8, 21-15 within 45 minutes.

Any chance of a comeback ended after the subsequent match which was a doubles contest. Denmark’s pair of Mathias Christiansen and Frederik Sogaard defeated the Indian duo of M.R. Arjun and Dhruv Kapila in straight games. The scoreline read 21-16, 21-9 in the favour of the Danes, which took their team score to 3-1. 

Sameer Verma was the final player in the Indian team whose match was rendered pointless due to the unassailable lead of their opponents. With this result, India crashed out of the Thomas and Uber Cup 2020 at the quarterfinals stage.

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