Kidambi Srikanth came up with an underwhelming performance as India succumbed 1-3 to Malaysia and settled for a Silver in the mixed team badminton event at the Commonwealth Games here on Tuesday.
Srikanth lost to lower-ranked Tze Yong Ng in three games to put the defending champions on the backfoot in the final.
PV Sindhu did what was expected out of her in the women's singles while the men's doubles pairing of Satwik Sairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty went down in the opening doubles.
With the win, Malaysia regained the title they had lost to India four years ago in Gold Coast.
For India to retain Gold, a lot depended on the outcome of the men's doubles tie featuring Rankireddy and Shetty, and, the Olympic Bronze medallists duo of Teng Fong Aaron Chia and Wooi Yik Soh.
The women's doubles and mixed doubles were India's weaker links and the team relied on men's doubles and the two singles to get the job done.
The opening contest was full of long and winding rallies but Reddy and Shetty lost majority of them, failing to keep pace with the ultra attacking Malaysian pair.
For a change, the Malaysian crowd made more noise than the Indians, providing a further push to Chia and Soh. After a tough battle, the Malaysians won 21-18, 21-15 to put their team 1-0 up
In the women's singles, two-time Olympic medallist Sindhu was expected to win comfortably but the 60-th ranked Goh Jin Wei made life very tough for the world number 7 but eventually won with the final scoreline of 22-20 and 21-17
World number 14 Srikanth came up with a flat performance in the men's singles. The 42-ranked Tze Yong Ng took the first game off Srikanth for the first time in three meetings to raise hopes of an upset.
The Indian then ran away with the second game to level the match.
In the decider, Tze prevail. It was also Tze's first win over the former world number 1 with the final result reading 21-19, 6-21, 21-16 .
The world number 11 duo of Thinaah Muralitharan and Koong Le Pearly Tan was too good for lower-ranked Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly in the women's doubles, winning 21-18, 21-17 to complete the task.