Birmingham, Aug 3: 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. Reddy and Shetty lost to Chia and Soh 21-18, 21-15 to put their team 1-0 up.
In the women’s singles, two-time Olympic medallist Sindhu defeated 60th ranked Goh Jin Wei 22-20, 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. The Indian then ran away with the second game to level the match. In the decider, Tze led 11-9 at the interval. It became 16-12 with Srikanth unable to match Tze’s net play. Srikanth sent a smash wide in the following point to hand Malaysia a 2-1 advantage. The final result read 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. (PTI)
