Indonesia Open: India's Satwik-Chirag pair storms into maiden Super 1000 finals; Prannoy bows out

India's star pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty on Saturday stormed into the finals of the Indonesia Open in Jakarta as they make their first-ever appearance in a summit clash in Super 1000. Satwik and Chirag lost the opening game to unseeded Min Hyuk Kang and Seung Jae Seo of Korea and then made a comeback to clinch the match in three games. However, the Indian fans were disappointed as HS Prannoy suffered a straight-game defeat to the top-seeded Viktor Axelsen of Denmark.

Satwik and Chirag were beaten in the first game by a margin of 17-21 before storming back into the contest and clinching the next two games by 21-19 and 21-18. They now hold a 3-2 head-to-head record over Kang and Seo. Meanwhile, Prannoy went down by 15-21, 15-21, and kept his head-to-head record against Axelsen 2-6.

"We feel really good the way we played today. They made a comeback in the third game but we stuck till the



end and I am happy that we didn't run away from our tactics. We stuck to it till the very end. The first time we are in a Super 1000 final and so it feels good," Chirag said after the win.

"They (Koreans) to have a really strong defence, so it was sort of an attack vs defence game. You just can't blindly attack them. We were mixing it up," he added.

The Indian duo were trailing 3-6 in the first game and then kept playing the catch-up game. The Indians reduced the margin to 15-19 but then went down by 17-21. In the second game, they were on song and led 6-3 before making it 11-4 in a hurry. Even though the Koreans made a comeback to make it 18-15, the Indians drew level with 21-19. In the decider, the Indian pair led by 12-5 and despite getting it leveled at 16-16, Satwik and Chirag managed to clinch the decider.

The Indians will now face World Champions W.Y. Soh and A. Chia in the final.