Error-prone P V Sindhu suffered a demoralising defeat in the quarterfinals while Sameer Verma’s gallant fight too ended in agony at the Toyota Thailand Open here on Friday.
However, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy claimed twin wins in mixed and men’s doubles quarterfinals along with Ashwini Ponnappa and Chirag Shetty to keep India’s flag fluttering at the BWF World Tour Super 1000 tournament here.
Sindhu looked a pale shadow of the player who had won the world championship Gold in 2019 as she committed too many unforced errors to go down 13-21, 9-21 against home favourite Ratchanok Inthanon.
In men’s singles, Sameer’s giant-killing run also came to an end after he squandered a match point to go down 13-21, 21-19, 20-22 to world No 3 Anders Antonsen in a quarterfinal.
With the defeat of Sindhu and Sameer, Indian challenge in singles competition ended in the tournament.
The doubles players, however, gave fans something to cheer as Satwik and Ashwini upstaged world No 6 pair of Peng Soon Chan and Liu Ying Goh of Malaysia 18-21, 24-22, 22-20 after toiling hard for one hour and 15 minutes.
Later in the day, Satwik and Chirag saw off another Malaysian pair of Ong Yew Sin and Teo Ee Yi 21-18 24-22 in 37 minutes.