Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty reached the men’s doubles final of the Singapore Open Super 750 tournament after defeating top seeds and world No. 1 pair Kim Won Ho and Seo Seung Jae of South Korea in straight games on Saturday. The fourth-seeded Indian duo beat the reigning world champions 21-19, 21-18 in a semifinal that lasted 52 minutes. Satwik and Chirag will now face the winner of the other semifinal between Indonesia’s third-seeded pair of Fajar Alfian and Muhammad Shohibul Fikri and China’s fifth-seeded duo of Liang Wei Kang and Chang Wang in Sunday’s final. However, there was disappointment for Dhruv Kapila and Tanisha Crasto in mixed doubles. The Indian pair went down 16-21, 21-17, 13-21 to Japan’s Yuichi Shimogami and Sayaka Hobara in the semifinals. The men’s doubles contest was closely fought from the start. The Korean pair led 13-11 at the mid-game interval of the opening game, but Satwik and Chirag stayed in touch and fought back to take the game 21-19. The Indians again found themselves behind in the second game, trailing 11-14 at one stage. But they recovered once more, winning key points in the closing stages to complete a straight-game victory and register their first win over the Korean duo. After the match, Chirag said the pair remained confident even when they were trailing. “Even when we were down we kept backing each other and stick around and eventually we knew they will crack at some point and if we stick to our plans we knew it will work. We had that belief and it went well for us,” Chirag said. Satwik explained the approach that helped them turn the match around. “Just keep pushing on to the net, I felt they were not in a comfortable position to defend. It’s always a slow start for us, we need to adjust a little bit.” Chirag also said the pair is making steady progress. “I think we are in the right direction and improvement is an ongoing process, you will never be perfect, there is always scope for improvement and we keep pushing ourselves and that we think we are on the right track.” The win was the first for Satwik and Chirag against the world No. 1 Korean combination despite having pushed them close in previous meetings. “We only played them twice actually, once last year in India Open and Malaysia Open semis and China finals, it went close but we realised if we have to beat them we have to be steady because we knew they have the strongest defence in the circuit,” Chirag said.
