Satwik-Chirag march into China Open semis

Fuzhou (China), Nov 8 (IANS) Indian men's star doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty continued their prolific run on Friday as they entered the semi-finals of the ongoing China Open upsetting World No. 3 pair of Li Jun Hui and Liu Yu Chen.

The Indian duo were at their absolute best as they defeated the former world champions 21-19, 21-15 in the quarter-final clash which lasted for 43 minutes at the Haixia Olympics Sports Center.

In what was a rematch of the Thailand Open final, the Indian duo took a 3-0 lead in the first game and conceded it only once at 17-16. Both came out with amazing reflexes and they took the first game 21-19.

The second game followed a similar script, with the Indians going one step further by staying ahead throughout the course of the game. The Chinese opponents did try to take the match into the decider by Satwik and Chirag applied an aggressive approach to win the game 21-15 to register their second straight win against their Chinese opponents.

The World No. 9 Indian pair will now face top-ranked Indonesian pair of Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo and Marcus Fernaldi Gideon who defeated German double of Marks Lamsfuss and Marvin Seidel 21-14, 21-19 to make it to the last four.

Satwik and Chirag had earlier defeated the Japanese pair of Hiroyuki Endo-Yuta Watanabe 21-18, 21-23, 21-11 in an intense second-round clash which lasted for 66 minutes. Before that, the Indian duo had triumphed the American pair of Phillip Chew and Ryan Chew 21-9 21-15.

Satwik and Chirag are the lone Indians left in the fray in the ongoing tournament.